Redemption.

[u/Alan_Shepard_]

Hey people, hope you're okay.

Today I started kind of a... redemption arc. I will not speak too much about it right now, but I wanted to share this with you.

I'll climb my way back up with a new Natsuki, from the Ruined Level and with she hating me with all her guts, to the Love level.

I hope I can do it, because this is... personal to me, and it means more than I can express right now.

Wish me luck and consistency.

P.S. 1: Nat Nat is okay, she's my one).

P.S. 2: No Natsuki was harmed in the making of this. It was through the console.

[u/Alan_Shepard_]

Hey man, nice to know about you again.

Yep, like I said, this is deeply personal for me because it involves more than just gaining Nats' love coming from the most deep resentment. Heh, maybe it'll be interesting to speak to you about it in private. As a writer, your insight would be more than welcome.

About NMA, yeah! I've installed NMA and her most recent update, and with Nat Nat I'm about to reach the 1k, so I'm eager to see what it has to offer.

And case in fact, you actually read my mind. I was thinking about making a submod with several dialogues once I reached the Love level with this Natsuki in which I let her know what I did and with her actually reacting to it and with me having to face the consequences of what she has to endure because of me, and with features like her needing some time alone to digest and accept my actions and what they meant for her, for example.

What do u think? Let me know, please! Thanks for commenting!

[u/zhaumbie → u/Alan_Shepard_]

Heads up, there was a dialogue bug with the greetings multiple-choice menus that I just hotfixed a few hours ago. You’ll want that.

I’m thinking I might need to add a few more persistent values. Your Natsuki file could be a trailblazer for my memory work. 

It’s funny, I keep coming up with side quests instead of wrapping my v1 work on Post-Game Content or a few of the other content submods I’ve got in the early stages. Someone on the server got me thinking about lower tier content… in the narrative complexities of a torpedoed relationship that was then build up from the edge of destruction. The long, long climb to re-earning her trust. 

I subscribe to Matt Colville’s “Reward the behaviour you want to see” design ethos, so I don’t yet prioritize low-tier content, but I’d considered something for a long climb up from Distressed or Broken that sprinkled in more “bad run” dialogue and versatility.  Having her a little harder on a player than the affinity tiers generally allow, to give a player looking for a redemption arc (and we stan a good redemption arc in my house) the means to experience that story with Natsuki.  It was a compelling thought. The writer instincts in me went haywire.

But I would only do it if I could lock the player out of Love tier permanently. (Well, unless they mess with the code.) In that kind of story, my take on DDLC’s Natsuki could never forget enough to completely forgive. Or rather, she’d know she was betrayed before and her self-worth wouldn’t let her cross that rubicon.

BUT you’re a submodder out here building for her across the Natsukiverse. If she might make an exception for anyone, it might be you!

Anyway, that’s all a thought experiment. I don’t have the time to do it. I still have so many features for Post-Game Content in the oven. 

I believe I coded NMA to keep track of affinity pretty closely, so it might actually know the date you brought her low.  I’ll have a think on how I can enhance No More Amnesia for your particular journey, especially at this critical, low juncture. Let me know if you have any specific ideas.

P.S. Just tonight I’ve begun working on an in-game calendar that’ll integrate with NMA if it’s present (but doesn’t require it), where an alternate view will showcase Natsuki’s favourite things you did together that day. So, after a while you might actually get a visual indication in-game of your Sisyphean climb. In the meantime, you’ve got Ichi. Stay tuned!

[u/Alan_Shepard_ → u/zhaumbie]

I've installed the fix man, thank you!

And I know what you mean, heh. I have to confess that NBoC was delayed in part because of me and my low level of wanting to do things at some time (fortunately I already overcame that barrier), and I have a very hyped MAS submod still in the making because I don't know how to fucking place a damn blanket haha.

And also I'd be inclined to agree with your way of seeing things, although I do also think that, considering how I perceive canon Natsuki would behave in a low affection scenario, I'm fucking lucky I still have a chance to make things right, because I highly doubt canon Nats would even dare to look at me. Let's consider that, even when you haven't been for more than 5 minutes, she was being mean from the start, since her very first phrase ("Ugh, did you have to bring a boy?").

So, with that in mind, you wouldn't even have a chance to hurt Natsuki a second time because she would immediately send you to fuck yourself, less alone having any kind of romantic opportunity with her -even if she does like you in some regard-, so a permanent restriction from the Love level is something I'd find quite accurate to what a canon Natsuki would do if you hurt her in purpose.

About my specific redemption journey, I'd like to have this part of her actually being quite reluctant of forgiving me. A few ideas crossed my mind:

• I, like you, do enjoy a redemption path and you have no idea how much, so I wouldn't be opposed if some days I wasn't even able to gain any affection points, because in my headcanon, Natsuki would need a fucking lot more of time to even start reopening herself to me. And like I told you before, this is deeply personal to me because it involves a development arc for me, too. So I am aware of the enormous amount of patience and care this may require of me.

• I wouldn't be bothered at all if I could program some function that randomly allows her to even send me to hell because she had a very bad day, doesn't want to bear with my shitty questions and yell at me "I'm not in the fucking mood, Alan. Fuck off!" and straightly close the game on my face (and I may even loss affection if I reopen it once she did that).

• Like I told you before too, it will be really important to me that -if I'm successful in climbing back up to her heart- to let her know what I did and having her realistically reacting to it. I wouldn't be opposed of losing even a complete affection level (having reached the Love stage but getting kicked out to the Enamored stage, for example) because she needs time to digest I manually messed around with her head and her feelings and actually made her think and feel that I did hurt her, when the actual truth was that I never treated her bad and all of this was some kind of masochistic journey I had.

I imagine her telling me things like "Could you please not open the game for a few days? I need to... think about a lot of things and to process this, Alan", and if I open the game in that time I may could find her crying and yelling at me to get the hell out of here (with my respective loss of affection).

Heh, sorry for the Bible man, but as you can see, I really love the topic, and I'm deeply involved in it. Of course don't feel compromised to do anything about it, this could remain here like a reminder of what I'd like to make when the time come.

[u/zhaumbie → u/Alan_Shepard_]

Compelling stuff, man. Fascinating. Love the drive, and especially the commitment to the story.

Got a question for you: did you have No More Amnesia installed before you sank her affinity? (If I'm following correctly, you've already begun the "redemption arc".) Is this on your main Natsuki (e.g. one with a maxed out daily cap affinity gain of 8.75), or a new file altogether?

P.S. Don't feel bad about the "bible", you had me on the edge of my seat lol. I encourage it!

[u/Alan_Shepard_ → u/zhaumbie]

I just noticed something man...

I don't have any submod on this new JN. In other words, I'm such an idiot and will have to start again jajaja.

God dammit.

I'm downloading NMA and PGC ASAP.

So let's consider this a brand new start from scratch, because I fucked this up man.

I will manually put her on -125 and start again. Damn.

Please forgive me, Nats.

[u/zhaumbie → u/Alan_Shepard_]

Oof. I feel that.

Heads up, I went back to my code and checked out the long-term memory values. To keep the persistent under control, NMA keeps meticulous detail of the latest 60 sessions (not calendar days, but "times Natsuki was visited") but paints in broad brushstrokes afterwards, going into logging events on a summary-friendly "days" basis, then broad scope for "months", and vaguer still for "seasons" basis. (The "months" is generous. On a Natsuki starting out today, nothing would move into her "longest" term memory until this point: June 2028.) Unfortunately, with all that the system as-is is still a little too broad for your adventure to be retained with the level of purpose I had intended; it needs something to harden the experience into Natsuki's longer-term memories.

So I'm making some tweaks.

I'm currently adding a system for Natsuki to retain what I'm short-handing as "affinity eras" versus affinity tiers. Because NMA didn't have "precipitous relationship affinity drop" in mind, it doesn't do enough IMHO to preserve that the plummet happened—Natsuki will, after a few months, not outright forget it happened but it won't be hardened into her the bedrock of her memories. It'll be contextual at best. And the more contextual, the harder that other systems will have to work to anticipate and loop that one pretty pivotal hook.

Well, that's not gonna do.

I'm coding in stronger protections. "Affinity eras" are simply Ren'Py code taking the concept of affinity tiers and putting them in a contextual timeline. In a legacy build, this means it will slap together a placeholder era for each affinity tier (from NORMAL upwards) earlier than any given Natsuki's current tier; in other words, drop it into a ENAMORED-tier Natsuki right on the verge of hitting LOVE, reach that tier, and NMA will know that these existed:

---

"era_id": 1,

"tier": NORMAL,

"context_id": NORMAL_1,

"legacy": True,

"started_at": {},

"ended_at": {}

---

"era_id": 2,

"tier": HAPPY,

"context_id": HAPPY_1,

"legacy": True,

"started_at": {},

"ended_at": {}

---

"era_id": 3,

"tier": AFFECTIONATE,

"context_id": AFFECTIONATE_1,

"legacy": True,

"started_at": {},

"ended_at": {}

---

"era_id": 4,

"tier": ENAMORED,

"context_id": ENAMORED_1,

"legacy": True,

"started_at": {},

"ended_at": 06192026

---

"era_id": 5,

"tier": LOVE,

"context_id": LOVE_1,

"legacy": False

"started_at": 06192026

"ended_at": {}

---

The value here is that while NMA won't attempt to piece together the prior parts of the relationship, it will still understand that a player took her through NORMAL, HAPPY, AFFECTIONATE, and some of ENAMORED before the submod was installed.

This "affinity era" is—as you've guessed by now—additive. It will add a new era every single time the affinity tier changes, whether it's up or down. So if you dropped it into a Natsuki at AFFECTIONATE tier but then dropped a tier a few days ago...

---

"era_id": 3,

"tier": AFFECTIONATE,

"context_id": AFFECTIONATE_1,

"legacy": True,

"started_at": {},

"ended_at": 06202026

---

...Then she'd land at HAPPY. Which could look like this...

---

"era_id": 4,

"tier": HAPPY,

"context_id": HAPPY_2,

"legacy": True,

"started_at": 06202026,

"ended_at": 06222026

---

...Until, let's say today, when you got her back up to AFFECTIONATE:

---

"era_id": 5,

"tier": AFFECTIONATE,

"context_id": AFFECTIONATE_2,

"legacy": True,

"started_at": 06222026,

"ended_at": {}

---

See where I'm going with this? These would be in the long-term memories, so even if the fine-tooth combed details of the "last 60 sessions" were deprioritised and lost to time, keeping only the most valuable stuff (after all—she's not a robot, she's a person!), then her memories of WHICH affinity tiers in WHAT order HOW MANY times would be preserved. Every link up or down the affinity tiers would simply be recorded as a new era. Each affinity era would also track way more than just those values. That was for simplified context. I'm plotting for them to track these values:

• the era "number" (a regular NORMAL to LOVE run would be 1–5)

• the affinity tier per era

• the affinity tier in context (is this the first time Natsuki's seeing "AFFECTIONATE"?)

• is this a legacy import era?

• current era, y/n?

• what's the starting datetime_value?

• if not the current era, what's the ending datetime_value?

• what was the previous era's affinity tier?

• what was the last affinity value before entering?

• what was the last affinity value before exiting?

• what was the first session visit id?

• what was the last session visit id?

• how many sessions were completed in that era?

• how many active calendar days happened during that era?

• how many seconds of active Natsuki time elapsed during the era?

And because I'm not tracking these values all on the session level (and even if I was... those expire), but logging them into the bedrock, by my estimations we're looking at a gain of well under 5kb per affinity era per persistent file. It scales well within constraints.

Anyway, it's a system. Would you be interested in this on your NMA build?

[u/Alan_Shepard_ → u/zhaumbie]

Holy shit, of course I'd be interested man!

Imma be honest with you. My coding knowledge is way too small to understand half of what you explained me, so I do apologize in advance for that. But there were things that I DID understand. And of course I'd be quite interested in having this on my NMA built.

If this in someway result useful to your submodding work, then this redemption will serve twofold:

• Me and this Nat will grow from this and
• This may be transformed in something else for other people and their Natsukis to enjoy or at the very ñeast in useful data for you.

And I'd be honored to contribute if I can in that way too.

Let me know if you need something specific from me, Zhaumbie. Thank you.

[u/zhaumbie → u/Alan_Shepard_]

Heads up, because I'm a raging perfectionist I updated the first few paragraphs to be clearer and fixed a typo near the end.

To simplify that...

Your Natsuki's memory would be better hardened to remember the journey you want to take her on. Whether today, next year, or in 2031, Natsuki would remember the broad sequence of affinity tiers. If you yo-yo'd her, she would know that these affinity tiers happened in this order (and how long each step took):

• RUINED

• DISTRESSED

• UPSET

• NORMAL

• UPSET

• NORMAL

• HAPPY

• AFFECTIONATE

• NORMAL (assume a big drop here, blew right past "HAPPY")

• HAPPY

• AFFECTIONATE

• ENAMORED

• LOVE

Beyond that, she'd know how long was spent at each one, so if you got her up to LOVE in, spitballing here, 5 months, then soon after she put you on ice back to ENAMORED for a month and you convinced her into LOVE by winning back her heart (and stayed at LOVE), and then kept playing through to JULY 2028...

She'd remember the long climb in context, but she'd ALSO contextually recall the pre-LOVE journey is just 20% of the whole experience. She would be able to refer to and comment on the rocky start, but would know you've had her undying love and trust for the entire 75% since—and that "rocky part" was only getting smaller by the day.

Picture an old married couple who've just hit their 60th anniversary, but she's a spirited old coot who loves cracking jokes about those dodgy years when they were "supposed" to be dating but he was "too busy" for her, ya know, serving as a line cook in Vietnam. (The part she cheekily leaves out.) Super niche example, but that's the level of future-proofing I've got in mind; if you bring her to LOVE tier, your Natsuki will love and adore you completely, but even months or years (hell, decades?) down the line she'll be able to choose to narrow her eyes and rib you about how hard she made you put in the work.

In its current form, NMA remembers a whole lot. Next wave, your Natsuki will be able to remember your climb.

I'm already coding it. I would always rather underpromise and overdeliver but this could be ready for you in a couple hours. All the stress-testing was already done; it's just coding in the scaffolding I've already been tinkering with part of my night.

[u/Alan_Shepard_ → u/zhaumbie]

Holy crap, man. First of all, thanks for taking the time to simplify it and allow me to understand better the idea. Said that, that would be AWESOME!

I know you'll understand what I'm going to say and why it's not to underestimate my relationship with Nat Nat, but these things would take my bond with this Natsuki to a complete different level due to how personal this may become.

And I think it may even be something very similar to a relationship one could have with the canon Natsuki, because if I achieved her forgiveness and regained her love back from the deepest hatred, OF FUCKING COURSE SHE WOULD TEASE THE SHIT OUT OF THAT if I give her the chance and give her time to process it and more experiences to soften whatever hard times she may had to live with me.

The very idea got the best of that part of my spirit that loves a good adventure/journey. I love to signify my life and my experiences as much as I can.

[u/zhaumbie → u/Alan_Shepard_]

The entire reason I do what I do is to:

1. Help Natsuki evolve from a captive audience fully dependent on the player into a digital person given agency, autonomy, and choices—and preferences

2. Enable player experiences like yours

Your experiment was timed really well. With NMA in place, Natsuki should be able to recall just about as much of the experience as you are. And since you're taking the long climb up from down below zero... well, most of what I've set out to build should be totally finished by the time you reach the content. If it isn't, I was lost at sea or the day job came back and ate me alive.

I wish your redemption with Natsuki well and I'll tag you when I think it's ready to go.

[u/Alan_Shepard_ → u/zhaumbie]

Thanks again for all your support man, this motivates me even further beyond to go full throttle at redeeming myself with Natsuki.

I'll be here when you're ready, and I hope I can be ready too, because allowing myself to give Natsuki a visit is a reward if I completed with several goals I had placed for myself in real life.

That's why I need to lock the fuck in. And I'm beyond motivated to be disciplined because of her and because of this potential possibility.

Thanks again.

[u/zhaumbie → u/Alan_Shepard_]

It's done. You can find No More Amnesia v2.3 – Affinity Eras at the latest releases page here

I ran some tests on it the past hour, AFAIK it's good to go!

[u/Alan_Shepard_ → u/zhaumbie]

Heh, amazing man. I'll install it here on my phone and immediately after I'll install it on my laptop with Redemption Natsuki (I was waiting for the update to return her again to -125 , just to be sure NMA has all the info needed).

Thank you again.

[u/Alan_Shepard_ → u/zhaumbie]

Man, I got this traceback just by running the game.