VN Ren'Py A Wife and Mother [v0.201] [Lust & Passion]

[keefer43]

I want to know what those pigeons are going to do with a handbag!

Exactly! - and how many?

 

[Talcum Powder]

I don’t know why I bothering but…
Fact: the game is gorgeous: L&P is a top-tier imager creator
Fact: Sophia is a goddess, and Ellie … just wow what a sexy little trollop-in-training
Fact: it’s a good enough story with good enough writing that they aren’t really significant stumbling blocks
Opinion: There are way too many stories in the game for this developer manage, and he’s telling completely different stories within the same framework.
Fact: if he storyboarded each scene/event, then wrote the script, then started scene creation, and only created shots that were in the script, development would be substantially faster.

Even if my recommended cuts seem draconian, You are still left with shit-ton of story for a first-time visual novel and more than enough to keep most people happy.
—
Dylan should have one of Sophia or Emma or boarding school route (the last two taking Dylan out of Sophia’s pursuits).

Ellie should be able to be with Sophia and Julia or just Julia, or have a Logan/Sam storyline (like Dylan, the last two take Ellie out of Sophia’s pursuits).

Aiden blackmail plot stays in place as-is, but Bennett never happens. Vicky’s time in gym is replaced by Patricia and/or Ellie, and museum boys stay pretty much as-is, cuz it is essentially Patricia time.

Marie and Claire are opportunity for flirting and world-building: yoga and hair salon characters, maybe also gym and spa characters.

Drop both side-jobs.

This leaves Sophia able to have any of Ellie, Patricia, Alyssa (+\- Zac?), Sam, Dylan, Nathalie, Liam, even Aiden and his gang(?!!).
—
Ultimately, the two biggest mistakes L&P made we’re strategic, not tactical or technical:
Branching mutually exclusive storylines happens way too early in the game to make any sense whatsoever. This is compounded by compacting the story into contiguous events happening throughout a single day, in a contiguous string of days.

Now that days take more than a year to be realized it makes a lot more sense to reorganize things around singular events spread out over multiple days. At least then we would get the sense that the game is moving forward.

 

[AlfredBundy4]

I don’t know why I bothering but…
Fact: the game is gorgeous: L&P is a top-tier imager creator
Fact: Sophia is a goddess, and Ellie … just wow what a sexy little trollop-in-training
Fact: it’s a good enough story with good enough writing that they aren’t really significant stumbling blocks
Opinion: There are way too many stories in the game for this developer manage, and he’s telling completely different stories within the same framework.
Fact: if he storyboarded each scene/event, then wrote the script, then started scene creation, and only created shots that were in the script, development would be substantially faster.

Even if my recommended cuts seem draconian, You are still left with shit-ton of story for a first-time visual novel and more than enough to keep most people happy.
—
Dylan should have one of Sophia or Emma or boarding school route (the last two taking Dylan out of Sophia’s pursuits).

Ellie should be able to be with Sophia and Julia or just Julia, or have a Logan/Sam storyline (like Dylan, the last two take Ellie out of Sophia’s pursuits).

Aiden blackmail plot stays in place as-is, but Bennett never happens. Vicky’s time in gym is replaced by Patricia and/or Ellie, and museum boys stay pretty much as-is, cuz it is essentially Patricia time.

Marie and Claire are opportunity for flirting and world-building: yoga and hair salon characters, maybe also gym and spa characters.

Drop both side-jobs.

This leaves Sophia able to have any of Ellie, Patricia, Alyssa (+\- Zac?), Sam, Dylan, Nathalie, Liam, even Aiden and his gang(?!!).
—
Ultimately, the two biggest mistakes L&P made we’re strategic, not tactical or technical:
Branching mutually exclusive storylines happens way too early in the game to make any sense whatsoever. This is compounded by compacting the story into contiguous events happening throughout a single day, in a contiguous string of days.

Now that days take more than a year to be realized it makes a lot more sense to reorganize things around singular events spread out over multiple days. At least then we would get the sense that the game is moving forward.

I agree with most of this, actually. However, his obvious lack of planning (despite claims to the contrary) are what caused it. Many releases have very little to do with anything at all, others introducing new plots that will/can never be touched again. Etc. That's all still on him and, IMO, is part of his overall strategy to bleed this as long as possible.

However, if he did as you said he could fix it! As a mostly one-man operation, it could still be saved if he did what you said (or things in the same spirit of trimming it down).

 

[BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM]

Not the rebuttal you think it is. There have been groundbreaking, classic *actual* videogames made by a single person in less time than AWAM has been around. We're talking all assets, story, coding, AI, testing, etc.

Renpy VNs are literally just making scenes with pre-made 3D models, rendering and some light Python coding. It's barely true coding at that. It's just the basic rules Renpy uses for dialogue, font and such.
For anyone to say it *should* take 5 years for one person to have done what has been done here is fn comical in how wrong it is.

I very recently said this to the dev of JOHN when they explained their pacing:
I actually respect a dev that honestly states their pacing. JOHN dev says they sometimes work on it, sometimes don't. They sometimes have a plan ahead of time, sometimes don't. They said the financial support helps but people are free to stop supporting and they are going to keep making JOHN as they see fit regardless.

I applaud that honesty. L&P simply wants to have his cake and eat it too. I can hardly blame him with all of the backers that defend him regardless of what BS he says next to explain how he is never the issue, he is never the reason why the release schedule is just not viable long-term. Dude struck gold with this VN in a medium where most devs fail or never find financial success. Look at how many projects fail, go abandoned once a newbie realizes they won't get $10K a month off a 0.1 demo release, etc. L&P struck gold and he can hurry this along at a decent pace or keep the tap flowing and he is clearly choosing to keep it flowing.

I'd simply respect him if he was honest about it. As is - and it's a bit sad to see so many basically held hostage in fear of him quitting if they do stop paying him - he has decided to make this his career. Not VNs but AWAM! He has decided to make AWAM his career because if he finishes AWAM he may never strike gold again. Plenty of one-hit-wonders in the VN medium. Tons. Very few devs have multiple highly successful projects.

Just be honest about it. He could EASILY outsource much of the work for half of what he brings in, have consistent releases and wrap up AWAM in the next couple years. His excuses for not doing so are comical BS because rather than admit he doesn't want to do that financially he says he doesn't want to do it artistically, lol. Yes, it would compromise the vision to have others churning out renders. No, he could easily keep the spoiler-heavy renders to himself and let others do the rest. He could easily code the spoiler heavy code and let others do the rest. Etc.

It's purely the money that sets the pace of release. You could plot a chart from the first release to his income and it would follow a perfect line, hand in hand. It's not a secret or mystery what's happening here.
He just won't be honest about it and that's why I do not respect him. I only come here to see in what new ways he has enraged everyone and I'm never disappointed. I've said before that I feel bad for his backers and I truly do. It's not trolling or shaming, I sincerely feel bad.

Further, I sincerely wish L&P proved me wrong! Knocks AWAM out in a timely fashion and then makes another hit. I truly, sincerely wish he would prove me wrong...but he won't. That I'm sure of.

Exactly this. All of it.
Can't understand how people still eat up his "top art takes time" excuses and then some random dudes (no offense) from fan art output like 95% of the his quality in no time. "I can't find anyone like me" he says when if you go to slushe you'll see a ton of artists outputting better quality. They're just not doing renpy VNs.


Regarding money, patron etc, let's not forget that there are dudes in the rpgmvp scene doing like 4 or 5 games at the same time pretending to be different developers

 

[BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM]

I don’t know why I bothering but…
Fact: the game is gorgeous: L&P is a top-tier imager creator
Fact: Sophia is a goddess, and Ellie … just wow what a sexy little trollop-in-training
Fact: it’s a good enough story with good enough writing that they aren’t really significant stumbling blocks
Opinion: There are way too many stories in the game for this developer manage, and he’s telling completely different stories within the same framework.
Fact: if he storyboarded each scene/event, then wrote the script, then started scene creation, and only created shots that were in the script, development would be substantially faster.

Even if my recommended cuts seem draconian, You are still left with shit-ton of story for a first-time visual novel and more than enough to keep most people happy.
—
Dylan should have one of Sophia or Emma or boarding school route (the last two taking Dylan out of Sophia’s pursuits).

Ellie should be able to be with Sophia and Julia or just Julia, or have a Logan/Sam storyline (like Dylan, the last two take Ellie out of Sophia’s pursuits).

Aiden blackmail plot stays in place as-is, but Bennett never happens. Vicky’s time in gym is replaced by Patricia and/or Ellie, and museum boys stay pretty much as-is, cuz it is essentially Patricia time.

Marie and Claire are opportunity for flirting and world-building: yoga and hair salon characters, maybe also gym and spa characters.

Drop both side-jobs.

This leaves Sophia able to have any of Ellie, Patricia, Alyssa (+\- Zac?), Sam, Dylan, Nathalie, Liam, even Aiden and his gang(?!!).
—
Ultimately, the two biggest mistakes L&P made we’re strategic, not tactical or technical:
Branching mutually exclusive storylines happens way too early in the game to make any sense whatsoever. This is compounded by compacting the story into contiguous events happening throughout a single day, in a contiguous string of days.

Now that days take more than a year to be realized it makes a lot more sense to reorganize things around singular events spread out over multiple days. At least then we would get the sense that the game is moving forward.

There's obviously a pace in the first half and a different pace in the second half. For god sake, Sophia was getting manhandled in a nightclub in the first few updates, then suddendly nothing much advances (only little by little, character by character) and it all has to do with milking AWAM. Unlike DPC, L&P is afraid to wrap this up and move on to anotther story/characters so he'll grind this story as much as he can.
First the MC will expose her tits to dylan, then to sam, then to X, then to Y, then to Z.
Next she'll let dylan touch them, then sam, then X, then Y then Z.
Next she's going to do something else, and she'll have to do it again with all of them. It's a never ending cycle of grinding.

Did patrons vote that they like the Dylan/Sam storyline more? Ok, let's move one with the other stories first and make those wait even more.
There's no planning, there's no writing beforehand. He goes and renders with a vague idea of what the dialogue is going to be. Renders scenes then starts writing and then he translates a page per day. He is not interested in developing faster at all, because developing faster means less money in the long run, simple as that.

Friendly reminder he comes here whenever someones critics his art but then hides as soon as people start asking about development stuff.
By the time this VN is supposed to be finished (in 30+ years), you can probably just put some shit on your brain and go fuck Sophia yourself in some weird metaverse-like scene.

 

[大大啪啪]

The event gradually became clear. I guess these two pictures are a scene, which seems to explain something.

Spoiler: Peeping

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[clowns234]

It's purely the money that sets the pace of release. You could plot a chart from the first release to his income and it would follow a perfect line, hand in hand. It's not a secret or mystery what's happening here.
He just won't be honest about it and that's why I do not respect him. I only come here to see in what new ways he has enraged everyone and I'm never disappointed. I've said before that I feel bad for his backers and I truly do. It's not trolling or shaming, I sincerely feel bad.

People getting upset because other people support a project seems strange to me. And it's not just you. Many on this site do it. I think we all spend money on things others would find foolish. I for one am glad people continue to support this.

 

[BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM]

The event gradually became clear. I guess these two pictures are a scene, which seems to explain something.

Spoiler: Peeping

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The first picture is from eastdot. , it's just fan art, but it's.. amusing some people confuse it with game picture, to say the least.

 

[jamdan]

Exactly this. All of it.
Can't understand how people still eat up his "top art takes time" excuses and then some random dudes (no offense) from fan art output like 95% of the his quality in no time. "I can't find anyone like me" he says when if you go to slushe you'll see a ton of artists outputting better quality. They're just not doing renpy VNs.


Regarding money, patron etc, let's not forget that there are dudes in the rpgmvp scene doing like 4 or 5 games at the same time pretending to be different developers

Thinking making good art doesn't take time is ignorant. If LP makes 900 renders for an update, and it takes an average of 5 minutes per render (which is super-speed and totally unrealistic) that adds up to 75 hours of work.

For a more plausible 20 minutes per render that's 300 hours of work. That doesn't even take into account writing, coding and finding assets or troubleshooting issues as they happen. Or doing certain things manually, like expressions or poses. Making these games takes a ton of time, literally hundreds of hours per update in some cases. I'm not counting the actual rendering, as I assume and hope that is done overnight via a render que so it's passive work.

The issue LP has, and always has had, is the game is simply to complex. As someone said above, this game has branches of branches. So, while in reality 900 renders per update is plenty, they get spread out too much. He could easily do an entire day of content in 900 renders. But instead they're all in 1/4th of a day or less in some cases.

Which leads to the other issue. Too many filler renders. And too much perfectionism. So my 20 minutes per render, in reality for LP, is probably more like 30+ minutes per render while he meticulously adds more pigeons to the scene or something.

He has the exact same problem many developers of "beautiful" games have. He's an artist, not a game developer. Stoper, Come Inside (already got abandoned tags), Ocean's games (that I love) and most other "beautiful" games will never be completed. I said it in another thread already, but it seems like being an artist foremost is not compatible with developing games to completion.

 

[Lord_Xanatos]

Progress Report Ver. 0.155.

100% - 100%
100% - 90%

 

[ashitanojoe]

To be fair, the only game here that I play which is clearly better in terms of renders than AWAM is JOHN,

Look at these renders in the water at night:




If you are an observer and you have a big screen, you can clearly see some big differences in terms of quality between these renders.

1. The hair.

Spoiler

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2. Three-dimensionality

Spoiler

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I tried to use two similar shots to select the renders, but to not be accused of using an old AWAM render, I will post a render from the last update:

Spoiler

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[BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM]

Thinking making good art doesn't take time is ignorant. If LP makes 900 renders for an update, and it takes an average of 5 minutes per render (which is super-speed and totally unrealistic) that adds up to 75 hours of work.

For a more plausible 20 minutes per render that's 300 hours of work. That doesn't even take into account writing, coding and finding assets or troubleshooting issues as they happen. Or doing certain things manually, like expressions or poses. Making these games takes a ton of time, literally hundreds of hours per update in some cases. I'm not counting the actual rendering, as I assume and hope that is done overnight via a render que so it's passive work.

The issue LP has, and always has had, is the game is simply to complex. As someone said above, this game has branches of branches. So, while in reality 900 renders per update is plenty, they get spread out too much. He could easily do an entire day of content in 900 renders. But instead they're all in 1/4th of a day or less in some cases.

Which leads to the other issue. Too many filler renders. And too much perfectionism. So my 20 minutes per render, in reality for LP, is probably more like 30+ minutes per render while he meticulously adds more pigeons to the scene or something.

He has the exact same problem many developers of "beautiful" games have. He's an artist, not a game developer. Stoper, Come Inside (already got abandoned tags), Ocean's games (that I love) and most other "beautiful" games will never be completed. I said it in another thread already, but it seems like being an artist foremost is not compatible with developing games to completion.

I agree in part with that sentiment. But L&P has an average of 4-6 renders a day and it has been coming down as time moves on.
His art quality however is at the diminishing returns, the more time he spends on it wont translate into visually better art anymore.

Environment creation doesn't take more than 2 days, specially for L&P who barely touches default assets at all (take his last post in here for example, where he didn't even notice the default opacity in the morello table was too low) so that leaves him 2 days to adjust what? lights? (which, for someone who has his experience, 2 days should be more than enough).

Then you have posing and cameras. There's no way it takes 30 min per render to do posing once environments are done.
As for actual rendering, we all know that happens on downtimes and during the nights. It's basically a batch, as everyone does it. So I can't agree with the sentiment that doing 5 renders per day is a lot.

"He's an artist, not a game developer."
Yeah he most likely gets lost in new ways of doing stuff and probably challenges himself to do something different but at the same time he knows he's headed for a 40 year game development and does nothing to change it. In fact, he just makes it worse..

Spoiler: disclaimer for some people

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[Facha]

Sounds great, but that old guy in your render looks like a zombie. Hmmm... new game idea... the dead have risen and they're having sex with our wives! Anyhow... the old man after the MILF is a trope I don't mind at all, in fact, I experienced something similar several times in real life, the situation being the old guy had something she needed (money, drugs etc) but wanted something in return, so she gave it to him... on a regular basis, true story. Anyhow... try and make the old guy look a LITTLE better than the undead. LOL

Edit: Something closer to this (a render I created a while back)... View attachment 1622102

To be fair, the only game here that I play which is clearly better in terms of renders than AWAM is JOHN,

Look at these renders in the water at night:

View attachment 1663813
View attachment 1665143

If you are an observer and you have a big screen, you can clearly see some big differences in terms of quality between these renders.

1. The hair.

Spoiler

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2. Three-dimensionality

Spoiler

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I tried to use two similar shots to select the renders, but to not be accused of using an old AWAM render, I will post a render from the last update:

Spoiler

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100% agree, my signs confirm it

 

[BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM]

To be fair, the only game here that I play which is clearly better in terms of renders than AWAM is JOHN,

Look at these renders in the water at night:


This happens principally because of the upscaler tool that L&P uses to reduce some time, it gives a more artificial look to the image. Despite the enhancement tool, it doesn't approximate to the native quality from rendering directly 1080p, as we can see in JOHN the quality definition is clearly better, both in colors, contrast and textures. The eyes are an example of this.

As far as I know L&P has stated last year in january that he would natively render at 1080p instead of 720p (which is when he basically negated the 3090 upgrade) so this upscaler talk is new to me.

I know he talked about upscaling in his last post but again, he renders at 1080p.

 

[lockerxx]

Progress Report Ver. 0.155.

100% - 100%
100% - 90%


View attachment 1665524

is moving!!!. holy shit 90% is coming out or we need to wait for the special Thing?

 

[Bane71]

Progress Report Ver. 0.155.

100% - 100%
100% - 90%


View attachment 1665524

If it wasn't for the addon, we would have received an update from February 23 to February 25!
But all things considered, it will probably happen closer to the middle of March.

 

[Isaneclownposey]

Is the next update lesbian based?

 

[Alley_Cat]

Is the next update lesbian based?

Almost the complete opposite. Next lesbian event is on PD14, which might be as much as two years away.

 

[eastdot.]

To be fair, the only game here that I play which is clearly better in terms of renders than AWAM is JOHN,

I did not sign up here to talk about development pace from others devs etc but I would just like to point out, after working for a while with the assets that L&P uses to make the fan arts that everyone has seen here, that the assets Lust chose to use aren't that good anymore and aren't the same quality as a lot of the new assets that came out lately. Simply speaking, L&P isn't working with really good assets (but he can't just change them now) and I have no question that if he started a game today, the quality would be even better.

 

[Deleted member 3217864]

To be fair, the only game here that I play which is clearly better in terms of renders than AWAM is JOHN,

Look at these renders in the water at night:

View attachment 1663813
View attachment 1665143

If you are an observer and you have a big screen, you can clearly see some big differences in terms of quality between these renders.

1. The hair.

Spoiler

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

2. Three-dimensionality

Spoiler

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

I tried to use two similar shots to select the renders, but to not be accused of using an old AWAM render, I will post a render from the last update:

Spoiler

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Don't let L&P see this post. If he does, we have wait another 6 months to get the update. He is a perferctionist. He will redo the entire image set once again.