Ren'Py Being Super [v0.20a Dark] [Sandman Games and Art]

[MiltonPowers]

I am going to take a LIGHT stab at the DARK (see what I did there heh heh) and say that there are 2 distinctive playthroughs, only they are separated because this is a Kinetic Novel with separate paths and directions, rather than a Virtual Novel, where you choose the direction you want the MC to go?
Also, is it easier to develop a novel this way, or was there a specific reason to have the paths for both playthroughs?

The only difference between Light and Dark variations is the color of the skin of the MC. It's not to do with playing a light or dark path.

 

[harem.king]

I am going to take a LIGHT stab at the DARK (see what I did there heh heh) and say that there are 2 distinctive playthroughs, only they are separated because this is a Kinetic Novel with separate paths and directions, rather than a Virtual Novel, where you choose the direction you want the MC to go?
Also, is it easier to develop a novel this way, or was there a specific reason to have the paths for both playthroughs?

Your stab is completely off.
This is not even remotely kinetic. lots of major choices with various effects.

As for the light/dark versions. this is just different MC looks.
Light = MC on the left
Dark = MC on the right

 

[7empest5teele]

Your stab is completely off.
This is not even remotely kinetic. lots of major choices with various effects.

As for the light/dark versions. this is just different MC looks.
Light = MC on the left
Dark = MC on the right

Its most likely been mentioned before on here, but I am pretty sure I heard the '70s call, they want their afro and fu-manchu-stach back lol.
So the only fundamental difference in this VIRTUAL novel downloads is the MC being Caucasian or African-American??
In a choice-driven novel, that VERY particular choice is not part of the VIRTUAL novel experience and requires a completely separate download.
OH wait it most likely means the story is completely different then, with birthplace, caretakers growing up, future personal history reveals, and things like that?

 

[harem.king]

Its most likely been mentioned before on here, but I am pretty sure I heard the '70s call, they want their afro and fu-manchu-stach back lol.
So the only fundamental difference in this VIRTUAL novel downloads is the MC being Caucasian or African-American??
In a choice-driven novel, that VERY particular choice is not part of the VIRTUAL novel experience and requires a completely separate download.
OH wait it most likely means the story is completely different then, with birthplace, caretakers growing up, future personal history reveals, and things like that?

facepalm. Did you not read what you were replying to?
The Light vs Dark DOWNLOAD only alters the visuals of the MC. everything else is the same.
HOWEVER, I explicitly told you this is very much NOT a kinetic novel but is instead full of choices.

The MC skin color is not an in game choice, it is a choice of which game you download.
The in game choices are myriad and make many differences.

To give examples, a monster is being hunted down. You can kill him yourself, help the mutants kill him, help the megacorp capture him, talk to him and find out he was a human who was experimented upon by the megacorp. kill him or help him escape. etc.

You can choose to be monogamous with any one of the many waifus. Or you can choose to make a harem.
If making a harem, you choose which girls to include in it.

So, for example. I choose to download the white MC version of the game.
In that version, I then choose harem (see my name). I choose to be neutral on the cybernetics issue, I choose to resolve conflict via mind control rather than gratuitous violence. I choose to talk to the monster to find out who he is. and so on and so forth.

 

[7empest5teele]

facepalm. Did you not read what you were replying to?
The Light vs Dark DOWNLOAD only alters the visuals of the MC. everything else is the same.
HOWEVER, I explicitly told you this is very much NOT a kinetic novel but is instead full of choices.

The MC skin color is not an in game choice, it is a choice of which game you download.
The in game choices are myriad and make many differences.

To give examples, a monster is being hunted down. You can kill him yourself, help the mutants kill him, help the megacorp capture him, talk to him and find out he was a human who was experimented upon by the megacorp. kill him or help him escape. etc.

You can choose to be monogamous with any one of the many waifus. Or you can choose to make a harem.
If making a harem, you choose which girls to include in it.

So, for example. I choose to download the white MC version of the game.
In that version, I then choose harem (see my name). I choose to be neutral on the cybernetics issue, I choose to resolve conflict via mind control rather than gratuitous violence. I choose to talk to the monster to find out who he is. and so on and so forth.

HOW did I come across that I was oblivious to anything you said??
Yeah...I fully understood what you said the FIRST time about the only differences being the color of the MC, which I replied that I MEANT, is odd that the choice of skin color wasn't just in ONE download rather than two versions of the SAME novel for such a minor inconvenience.
The choices of gameplay, of relationship choices, of virtually everything are the same, but the color of their skin.
Whatever, it's redundant at this point, as is my confusion.
It should be ONE download with the choice of characters in that very same ONE download.
It doesn't matter to me since I am running a 2TB 990 Pro, a 4TB 990 Pro, and a 4TB 870 Evo, so plenty of space, MANY players on here are not so fortunate.

 

[Master of Puppets]

HOW did I come across that I was oblivious to anything you said??
Yeah...I fully understood what you said the FIRST time about the only differences being the color of the MC, which I replied that I MEANT, is odd that the choice of skin color wasn't just in ONE download rather than two versions of the SAME novel for such a minor inconvenience.
The choices of gameplay, of relationship choices, of virtually everything are the same, but the color of their skin.
Whatever, it's redundant at this point, as is my confusion.
It should be ONE download with the choice of characters in that very same ONE download.
It doesn't matter to me since I am running a 2TB 990 Pro, a 4TB 990 Pro, and a 4TB 870 Evo, so plenty of space, MANY players on here are not so fortunate.

So it should be twice the size, forcing players who are not so fortunate as you in bandwidth and storage space to download and store both versions instead of just the one that they want? I don't think you've thought this through very well.

 

[harem.king]

It should be ONE download with the choice of characters in that very same ONE download.

The game is 5.4 GB.
If they merged the two downloads together it would be 10.6GB
And that extra space would be totally wasted, because everyone knows which one they want before they even download.

 

[7empest5teele]

So it should be twice the size, forcing players who are not so fortunate as you in bandwidth and storage space to download and store both versions instead of just the one that they want? I don't think you've thought this through very well.

Lol, "I don't think you've thought this through very well." Now, isn't this rich?
Ahem, if the ONLY difference between the TWO downloads is the color of one's skin, then you could have THAT as the first choice or option.
If that is NOT the only difference, then why not include the different options and choices into the ONE file?
Now by having that be the ONLY difference between the two downloads, one could say that you would have to download only ONE of the options instead.
I would think there would be no NEED for doubling up that pesky data file would there?

 

[MiltonPowers]

Lol, "I don't think you've thought this through very well." Now, isn't this rich?
Ahem, if the ONLY difference between the TWO downloads is the color of one's skin, then you could have THAT as the first choice or option.
If that is NOT the only difference, then why not include the different options and choices into the ONE file?
Now by having that be the ONLY difference between the two downloads, one could say that you would have to download only ONE of the options instead.
I would think there would be no NEED for doubling up that pesky data file would there?

But you would need to have 2 copies of every render with the MC in it, even if it's just his hand (for example), it's still a different render. So while it might not be exactly double the size, it would be still be significantly bigger.

 

[Master of Puppets]

then why not include the different options and choices into the ONE file?

Because that one file would then be twice the size, how on earth do you fail to realise this?

 

[e6mill]

Because that one file would then be twice the size, how on earth do you fail to realise this?

This would only be true if the MC was shown in every render...
Bigger than necessary, tho.

 

[7empest5teele]

The game is 5.4 GB.
If they merged the two downloads together it would be 10.6GB
And that extra space would be totally wasted, because everyone knows which one they want before they even download.

Wow, I feel deja vu here.
Alright, so WHY would someone have to download BOTH versions if the ONLY thing different, is the color of their skin, if that is the ONLY reason, then just code the FIRST choice into ONE file, so you only need to DOWNLOAD one file.
FFS I can already SEE it's not going to be clear enough.
If you have ONE choice of character, the game gets to use that ONE character as a render reference, not needing the other.
If it's the same renders, expressions, actions, or differences, it's not that difficult to switch between the MC choices, again it won't require a double download.
Maybe if I focus on ONE line, it will be easier to define.
I am beating a dead horse here, repeating shiit and getting repeated answers.
SO I will leave this with one last though, you don't need 2 downloads even with the dual MCs, if what I said is now somehow more understandable, then great, if not, this is redundant and idiotic to say the same thing, and expect a different result, especially when none of this matters at all LOL.
So I am done, no need for a repeat performance, I am going to start my next update and cover Summers Gone.
Peace to all and be well.

 

[MiltonPowers]

Wow I feel deja vu here.
Alright so WHY would someone have to download BOTH versions if the ONLY thing different, is the color of their skin, if that is the ONLY reason, then just code the FIRST choice into ONE file, so you only need to DOWNLOAD one file.
Maybe if I focus on ONE line, it will be easier to define.

Why would someone who wants to play as a white or black dude download both versions?
You only download the one you want to play?

 

[Adhdclassic]

Your stab is completely off.
This is not even remotely kinetic. lots of major choices with various effects.

As for the light/dark versions. this is just different MC looks.
Light = MC on the left
Dark = MC on the right

why the brother got to have the jeri curl and the 80s pornstache. Why not a cesar and remove the stache.

 

[harem.king]

Wow, I feel deja vu here.
Alright, so WHY would someone have to download BOTH versions if the ONLY thing different, is the color of their skin, if that is the ONLY reason, then just code the FIRST choice into ONE file, so you only need to DOWNLOAD one file.
FFS I can already SEE it's not going to be clear enough.
If you have ONE choice of character, the game gets to use that ONE character as a render reference, not needing the other.
If it's the same renders, expressions, actions, or differences, it's not that difficult to switch between the MC choices, again it won't require a double download.
Maybe if I focus on ONE line, it will be easier to define.
I am beating a dead horse here, repeating shiit and getting repeated answers.
SO I will leave this with one last though, you don't need 2 downloads even with the dual MCs, if what I said is now somehow more understandable, then great, if not, this is redundant and idiotic to say the same thing, and expect a different result, especially when none of this matters at all LOL.
So I am done, no need for a repeat performance, I am going to start my next update and cover Summers Gone.
Peace to all and be well.

You clearly never played the game.
This game is NOT live rendered for the player
This game is playing prerendered videos and images that were prerendered by the dev and saved as image files and video files into the images folder in the game.

Spoiler: more details

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[harem.king]

This would only be true if the MC was shown in every render...
Bigger than necessary, tho.

technically true.
MC is not in every render. So if dev was organized it would be less. but from looking at how he works it would require time consuming reorganization.

Also while we are at it, looking at the files they are using ridiculously out of date codecs
a bunch of older video renders are in mpeg1 codec
while the newest renders in VP8 codec.

mpeg1 was obsoleted by mpeg2 was obsoleted by mpeg3 was obsoleted by mpeg4 was obsoleted by h264 was obsoleted by h265 was obsoleted by h265 10 bit was obsoleted by AV1.

VP8 was obsoleted by VP9 was obsoleted by AV1

h265 sorta kinda obsoletes VP9 except that VP8, VP9, AV1 chain are all royalty free open codecs while all the other codecs I mentioned are proprietary.

And yes, currently in 2024 the worlds most superior codecs (by far, to the point of completely obsoleting all other codecs) are open and royalty free.
being opus audio codec and av1 video codec.
if you want lossless audio compression then flac which is also foss and royalty free.

dev could probably shave a few gigs by just rerendering everything into proper AV1 files.
and rerender all the audio files in opus while he is at it.

I did some tests, converting the mpeg1 to av1 reduces filesize by over 91% without affecting quality.
converting the VP8 files reduces filesize by over 95%.
this 5.4gb game should have easily been a 500mb game.

Compressed

The official compressed version is trash.

This game puts all the images in a single file
/game/images.rpa file
while all videos and audio go into the folder
/game/images/ folder

The official compressed version compressed the files in the same format as before! just lowered the quality a lot.

It only took 30 min for tdarr to automatically recompress the 2.3GB of loose unpacked mpeg1 and VP8 video files to 202 MB AV1 files without any noticeable visual quality loss... had i left it in 1080p instead of lowering to 720p it would have likely been 300MB. still, no noticeable loss in quality.

While the official compressed version crunches the 2.3GB of loose unpacked mpeg1 and VP8 video into 1.5GB of mpeg1 and VP8 files at horribly bad quality...
While the 2.3GB of images (found in images.rpa file) are compressed to 1GB.
This is just awful.

 

[harem.king]

Ok so... after converting all the videos in this game to av1 10bit crf 30 preset 8 for massive space savings (83% smaller reduction! it is ridiculously huge reduction. I decided to keep their resolution. while there is no noticeable loss in quality for going down to 720p. which saves 90%+ of size, I was concerned about potential compatibility issues so I decided to leave it at 1080p)
no noticeable change to visual.

I was getting black screen when trying to play them in game.
A bit of digging later and I found that dev has not updated the renpy engine since 2021. This game files state it is running on renpy 7.4.9 copyrighted 2021

v7.4.9 was released on oct 7. 2021

You must be registered to see the links

v7.6.0 added AV1 support on may 14th 2023

You must be registered to see the links

and current version of engine is v8.3.2

You must be registered to see the links

I mean, you could still save some decent space by converting all those VP8 and mpeg1 files to VP9 without updating the game engine.
but nowhere near as much as you can with AV1 and there is no reason to not upgrade the engine.
so dev really needs to get his act together and update the base renpy engine to latest version.
so he can then recompress all the videos to AV1 and the pictures to AVIF

if anyone wants. here are the converted video files
being super v0.20c-light version movies converted to AV1 10bit crf30 preset8.7z

You must be registered to see the links

I should note that the .mpg files are actually .webm files, I just renamed them to .mpg which is simply lying.
This avoids the need to edit the scripts to change all the filenames.
In vast majority of programs lying about the extension works just fine as the extension is only used to determine which program runs a file. the actual contents of the file are examined to determine what kind of file it is.
but since the engine does not support av1 I could not confirm it really does not matter what the extension is called so long as the files are really valid webm files.

 

[Allan Trumbull]

Android port (light) available ?

 

[Bahamut Zero]

Hi guys, sorry to ask this, perhaps is just a stupid questions, but I can't understand. I downloaded and opened the walkthrough.
This walkthrough:

Extras: Walkthrough (WIP)
KROM95 thanks for the links

This is the one on the page 1. But i have some problem. I try to open the walk with adobe acrobat reader.
But every time i try to open this walkthrough, the app ask me to try to use the Pro version... but I don't want to try the "PRO" version. So I close and reopen the walk, but nothing. It keeps asking me to switch to the pro version, what am I doing wrong? Can anyone explain to me why?

Thank you

 

[MiltonPowers]

Hi guys, sorry to ask this, perhaps is just a stupid questions, but I can't understand. I downloaded and opened the walkthrough.
This walkthrough:

Extras: Walkthrough (WIP)
KROM95 thanks for the links

This is the one on the page 1. But i have some problem. I try to open the walk with adobe acrobat reader.
But every time i try to open this walkthrough, the app ask me to try to use the Pro version... but I don't want to try the "PRO" version. So I close and reopen the walk, but nothing. It keeps asking me to switch to the pro version, what am I doing wrong? I'll start by saying that I can open all the walk made of this type, but strangely this one doesn't open for me. Can anyone explain to me why?

Thank you

The Walkthrough is a microsoft word document (not a pdf). So, I believe it is your document reader that is trying to update to pro, rather than the walkthrough.

I've converted it into a pdf, see if that works for you. (Right click and save as).