i play on win7, yeah game just get stuck on the black screen and nothing happens after and so far its just the blacksmith
- Thread starter NovusPeregrine
- Start date
Interesting, but after accpeting a job at the magic shop the game gets stuck on the town main menu image.
- Mar 30, 2019
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Further investigation ..
The glitch is not Windows specific. It happens on Linux too. When I start the game on Linux, it works fine at first. But when I load a save from the Windows Installation (the one with the workaround) it immediately locks up with one image.
edit: wrong save. The linux saves work.
So the game somehow "memorizes" the glitch state, maybe in the save or config file.
Another possibiliy: The game engine comes with an inbuilt chromium browser runtime that executes the JS code (and de facto runs the game).
edit: found the runtime config and even completely erasing it before a game restart doesn't remove the glitch.
I don't know enough about the vnmaker environment. Can you as Developer change the version/config/caching of the bundeled chromium runtime? Maybe an older/newer version might work? Or an option like "clear browser runtime cache at game load" ?
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- Nov 27, 2017
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I'm sorryThe picture renaming workaround is not really helping.
I renamed the first picture and ist was immediatly replaced by another.
Closed the game. Renamed that one. Started the game and loaded my save. Stuck on the next picture.
I probably have to rename every picture
, I know this is frustrating. Unfortunately, right now there seems to be literally nothing I can do. I (and other devs too) have opened bug reports, opened forum discussions on both the engine's support forum AND steam community forum, and I've sent a private message to the developer on the support forum, as well. I've provided them with a copy of the game and a save with the bug in it...and there seems to be literally nothing else I can do. I've even combed through the game's script to the best of my own coding ability, trying to track down a brute force 'clear' command I could add to scenes to force it to clear whatever buffer it's getting stuck in. Absolutely no luck finding anything of the sort, so far, despite several hours of trying.I swear I'm doing everything I can to fix this, since so many people are having issues, I just don't know what else to try at this point...
*Edit - Opps, tagged this for a reply then forget to reply.*
I've been utterly unable to replicate this on my own win7 copy. Do you have a save file where the error pops up every time?
Unfortunately, the vnmaker environment is designed to keep users away from the scripts as much as possible (I adopted it after multiple games using Ren'py, because I was sick of spending so much of my dev time on coding, which I HATE even if I'm decent at it). I've been hunting through the limited documentation they have on the scripting for the engine (
You must be registered to see the links
), but a lot of it is seriously obtuse and poorly explained. Double unfortunately, I'm utterly unfamiliar with JS code. I'm primarily a C/C++/C# language coder, with some python knowledge, and JS is just enough different to be frustrating my ability to understand just what the hell their engine is doing (it has virtually zero comments in a lot of it's critical files -_-).You did give me an idea, though not one I can follow through on just yet. VNMaker allows games to be built for Web deployment. I'm not sure if the error will continue across that, but even if it does, it would at least let other people see the console and see if they can spot some bullshit I'm not seeing. Unfortunately, it appears that Chrome is built by paranoid people and local deployments won't run do to some type of error I've never even HEARD of (CORS). Which means I'd have to deploy it to a webserver...and the only way I know of that I might realistically be able to do that is via Newgrounds. Which...is down at the moment -_-.
- Nov 27, 2017
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Got a reply from the Visual Novel Maker people, no solution yet, but at least they are talking to me. This is what they've sent:
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Hi Novus,
thanks for your feedback and sending your projects. My apologies for the bad experience you are making right now. As far as I know, the issue is that a sprite kinda gets “unlinked” from the vn system but still remains in the core-engine graphics lists forever with no link and no connection to anything. So it is displayed forever and never detected for deletion.
The question is how this issue happened, that is the important part. Especially if it is not related to skipping only and randomly happens. Of course we want to get this fixed as soon as possible too. It is kinda weird that this happens for a few people only while we have complex games released, also commerical ones, which do not have this issue. Most of those games have been created with an older VN Maker version so maybe this issue only happens in latest Stable/Beta. But even in that version, it doesn't happen for everyone it seems.
However, quickly fixing an issue like that with no clear cause is not that easy/fast. I will see what I can do here and let you know. Any kind of new information you get about this might be helpful to us.
I am not sure if a workaround with a script is possible but I have some ideas, I will see what I can do here too. Thanks for sending your projects, I think it helps a lot.
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So, at least they have some ideas, hopefully. Will keep people updated.
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Hi Novus,
thanks for your feedback and sending your projects. My apologies for the bad experience you are making right now. As far as I know, the issue is that a sprite kinda gets “unlinked” from the vn system but still remains in the core-engine graphics lists forever with no link and no connection to anything. So it is displayed forever and never detected for deletion.
The question is how this issue happened, that is the important part. Especially if it is not related to skipping only and randomly happens. Of course we want to get this fixed as soon as possible too. It is kinda weird that this happens for a few people only while we have complex games released, also commerical ones, which do not have this issue. Most of those games have been created with an older VN Maker version so maybe this issue only happens in latest Stable/Beta. But even in that version, it doesn't happen for everyone it seems.
However, quickly fixing an issue like that with no clear cause is not that easy/fast. I will see what I can do here and let you know. Any kind of new information you get about this might be helpful to us.
I am not sure if a workaround with a script is possible but I have some ideas, I will see what I can do here too. Thanks for sending your projects, I think it helps a lot.
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So, at least they have some ideas, hopefully. Will keep people updated.
- Mar 30, 2019
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Get your point. But on the other hand, RenPy seems to be far more stable and relyable. I guess half of the games here are built on it and so there is a lot of knowledge and experience around. I've seen vnmaker only in a few japanese games so far.
Maybe you switch back to RenPy? I'd offer my help with scripting -- although I rather code in "bracket hell" than in "whitespace hell" nowerdays.
But either way, thanks for the game with great content
. Maybe the vnmaker guys will fix the engine (they want to play it themselves ) and we can happyly continue to get Kiralia trapped and tied up .
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Yeah, I'm seriously regretting moving over to VNmaker. Up until I went to release, it seemed like a very nice switchover, keeping the amount of coding I had to do down to a bare minimum. But ever since I first released something for my patrons to play with, it's been pure hell. I thought, since Visual Novel Maker is actually made by the same people that make RPG Maker, and it's a paid engine besides, that this sort of BS wouldn't be happening -_-. Silly me. Unfortunately, I'd be throwing out at least two months worth of work (I've been working on it for 4 months, but about half of that was image gathering and initial setup) if I tried to switch at this point, so I'll give them at least a chance to fix it now that they are talking to me.Get your point. But on the other hand, RenPy seems to be far more stable and relyable. I guess half of the games here are built on it and so there is a lot of knowledge and experience around. I've seen vnmaker only in a few japanese games so far.
Maybe you switch back to RenPy? I'd offer my help with scripting -- although I rather code in "bracket hell" than in "whitespace hell" nowerdays.
But either way, thanks for the game with great content
Also, "whitespace hell" is my new favorite term for Ren'py coding. Seriously, who thinks it's a good idea to use whitespace characters to organize code. You have no idea (or maybe you do) how much that bothered/still bothers me. It's actually part of the reason I wanted away from Ren'py in the first place -_-.
- Mar 30, 2019
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But that's what you get when trusting proprietary code. There's a reason, why open source solutions are so popular ..
It's still an early release with not too much logic and decisions in the storyline. Switching to another engine would still be possible. Once you add more story, complexity and decision branches there's no turning back
The interpreter needs to know, where your statement ends. Doing it with whitespaces is one way, that makes the code look much nicer and more readable -- so the concept itself isn't too bad. Of course debugging missing whitespaces isn't easy. But think about the alternative:
...
});}}});} else {console.log('file not found.');}});});}}
...
this is not a bad joke, but a fragment of Node JS code. So I'm not sure, if moving away from Python and whitespaces to JS and brackets made it any better.
theres a bug where the game sometimes crashes with no warning (goes blackscreen ) as well as one where saves somehow got corroupted in a way that all the base scenes where replaced with night/town only sex scenes where visable it couldnt be fixed
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In my experience, open-source solutions are usually less stable, not more. Ren'py is an extremely odd exception to that. And even there, it might be stable...but a lot about its structure and the choices made for it are just plain weird, which is another common result of open source projects.
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It's not nearly as early as you might think -_-. I do, in fact, have an actual programming degree...but I'm a slow coder and this is NOT my job (though it would be nice if someday it could be!
). It's one of multiple game projects I do on the side (I'm still actively developing The Dungeon of Lewdity at the same time) that I do on top of a 40 hour a week day job. It would take me very literally months to transfer everything I have over to Ren'py, particularly as I'd have to code many of the systems that are pre-existing in VN maker into Ren'py. I'm not sure how much you've done with Ren'py...but that engine honestly isn't made for the way I tend to stretch the meaning of 'visual novel' to include RPG stat systems and the like. It can be done (I've done it before with two other games), but it's awkward and painful to code, since these sort of free-exploration RPGs aren't even really visual novels (strictly speaking, they REALLY aren't, but western game devs like me have stretched the genre to include them) and therefore VN engines aren't really made for them... Add in the fact that I HATE coding with the burning passion of a thousand supernova (precisely because I did get a degree in it. Like many people, a four-year college degree only served to kill any and all joy I once had it something), and being forced to switch engines would probably just flat kill the project at this point.Well, probably not...at the moment it feels like it would because I overreached badly in the last couple of months and the burnout is getting to me. More likely I'd have to put it on the backburner for a few months and only work on it when I could do so without screaming, though, which would delay any new content for a godawful amount of time. I'd hate for this to turn into one of those projects that seems to be perpetually stuck in 'engine changes' or 'graphics improvements' or 'new feature you never asked for' and never sees actual new content -_-.
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As for the interpreter: Trust me, I know. I actually had to write an interpreter from scratch in college, for one of my classes in my final year. It was hell...and was followed up by having to write a linker, which was even worse -_-. Those two projects were part of what finally made me want to feed by programming textbooks into a woodchiper. Slowly. So the cursed things would feel more pain as the devil came for their black hearts.
As for the whitespace making things nicer and more readable, I actually personally find it the opposite. Properly coded brackets are much easier for me to track. Since, if they are done RIGHT, rather than sloppy, they become markers for how far into a set of nested statements you are, by counting the brackets up quickly. Whereas with whitespace, if you're looking at a long chunk of code three screens down from where the class/function started, you have to painstakingly track back up to see where in the indent-hell you are or need to be, which is HARD since all the whitespace blends together, particularly for tired eyes. So with Ren'py's mess, I often found myself all but whimpering as I physically had to use a finger to track the indent I needed while scrolling through pages of code -_-. *shudder*
Yeah, there's a reason I switched engines. And I didn't try just VN maker either. I tried a half dozen different options, including Unity, Tyranno Builder, RPG maker, and VN Maker. VN Maker SEEMED like the best option.
*edit* P.S. Rereading that, realized it might have come off as confrontational. It wasn't meant to be
. You've been nothing but helpful! Thanks again for all the help! I'm just a bit stressed out at the moment so I might have kinda ranted a bit. Sorry :-(. The corrupted saves like is a known issue, please see other posts by me in this thread about it. Currently, there's a partial workaround (you can see that on the release post on my patreon). The crashes though, those are a bit concerning. Is there any pattern to them? It just crashes truly randomly? Or is it always in a certain part of the game? I'm still trying to track down a black screen issue someone is having in the blacksmith's shop....
Also, does it only happen after the game's been running for a while? I've begun to have a suspicion it may be leaking memory from somewhere...and I might know what's causing it since it's an issue I had to fix before.
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- Mar 30, 2019
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Not at all. It's an inspiring discussion. In the end it's your game and you stick with whatever you're most comfortable to work with.
And I fully agree to your Bracket vs. Whitespace point of view.
Some hopefully constructive ideas about the game content:
- Expressions: Kiralias face doesn't show expressions. I don't know how much effort it is in the animation tool (what do you use?), but maybe she could smile, frown or show surprise sometimes.
- Work in Progress: During the progression of the story, you could show a hint like "You have seen all content in this location for this version". So players don't try to grind more scenes.
- Select vs. ramdom: Instead of triggering random scenes (Inn or Magic Shop) you could let the player select. Like when you work for Jillian, she could show you the selection of currently available artifacts and you choose which one to try. Inn scenes could trigger, depending on what you decide to drink or whom you decide to drink with. The request for a gallery will come up sooner or later. But if the player can choose the scene to trigger, there's no need for a gallery.
- Farming: During adventures, Kiralia could find new artifacts and take them to Jillian to try them out. She could find bondage gear and give it to her mistress or the farm to play with. She could find armor to display and sell with the blacksmith.
- Fast travel: A fast travel Screen available in Kiralias room would speed up travel.
Edit: one more:
- Chatting shouldn't progress time: If you have a chat with an NPC, after 3 simple questions, the day is done. Just chatting shouldn't progress the time of day.
Again, thanks for a great game. Looking forward to see Kiralaia in more distress. And if you need help, I'd be happy to support.
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- Nov 27, 2017
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Whew! Sometimes, I apparently come off as a passive-aggressive asshole in text when I didn't mean to
. Strangely don't have that issue with my writing, usually, only in a forum or reddit discussion and such.Constructive idea responses:
- Expressions: I REALLY want to add expression -_-. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out a way to do it simply. So far, the only ways I've found were extremely clunky. That's the downside to using a modded version of Skyrim, there are things it just isn't designed for that I've had to either accept as-is, or find workarounds for. Another example being that's it's actually pretty time consuming to add a custom NPC, for example. I'm hoping in the future to have at least a few expressions for Kiralia that can be used outside sex...inside the sex animations is even worse, though.
- Work in Progress: This is part of why I included a walkthrough for the first section of the game, at least. Though earlier releases for patrons also had anywhere with incomplete content marked in-game. I haven't tried to make an actual scene counter, though, as there's a sorta weird limit to the number of variables you can have in VN Maker. There's probably a way around that, but it's on my 'to figure out' list rather than my 'already figured out' list
. I could probably at least make one that counted against the known unquie-scene number, though. Might consider adding that to the next build...-Select vs Random: Hmmm, I'm not sure about this one. I set it up as random partly so that neither 'Kiralia' or the Player know what is going to happen to her when she agrees to something or takes an action. An element of risk and the unknown sort of. Maybe...hmmm...I might be able to set it up so that, once you've seen all scenes for a specific 'job' THEN you can select between them for repeats? Or even tie it to the counter system, set counters of scene per-job, letting people repeat ones they've found already or risk the random to find new ones... Possible. Very possible. Definitely a thing to go onto the 'non-critical extras' list, though. For now, I'd prefer to pump in new content as much as possible, rather than tweaking old with better features. At least for the first 3-4 builds.
-Farming: An excellent idea if I choose to expand Hope's rest down the line! Or possibly even for another Hub-area. For the moment, Hope's Rest is effectively done. Build 2 will be introducing the second Hub-area, New Landing.
- Fast travel: *cringe* that's a good idea! If I can figure out how to add it without causing lag issues... One of my ongoing issues with the engine actually centers on the Character Menu Button. I'm sure you have probably noticed that going into/out of the Character Menu is suppppeeerrrr slow for such a simple thing, right? Yeah, well, that's because of some REALLY dumb choices in the engine design that make using the Call Scene function a terrible idea. In order to fix some major performance issues in earlier versions, I had to strip out every since Call Scene (which pulls up a new scene over the current one, then returns you back to the original when done) and replace them with Change Scene (which completely switches you to a new scene) commands. The effect on performance in the Call Scene command makes me sure that they were not actually closing those scenes when you 'returned,' creating a massive drag on the engine over time, resulting in Black Screens of Death. In fact, I'm pretty sure I missed a Call Scene somewhere, which is causing some of the other bugs being reported over time.
Long story short, it's not as easy as it should be to just call up an overlay with a fast travel set on it. Unless...okay, I'm stupid. I don't need to do that. I can just as a fast travel choice with sub-choices for the major areas. Duh. Eh, I'll leave the above paragraph anyway, since it has some details on another problem (the black screening thing some people are reporting).
- Chatting shouldn't progress time: I actually did this on purpose. Beyond the times of day shift, time (as in the passage of days) has no meaning in the game. Intentionally, as I hate it when games restrict me to an arbitrary 'do this is 100 days!' sort of thing that makes it hard to experience all content. That serves a valid purpose in some games, of course, but a lot of them include it when it would really just be better to let the player explore. Anyway, the preceding detail is only relevant in the 'passing time does no harm' sense. As for why I made chatting actually take time? I wanted to provide an easy way for players to intentionally pass time if they needed to, without having to return to guildhall for the 'rest' option. I didn't want to include a 'wait' option in every menu, due to some of the menus having to be manually-placed to avoid overrunning character's faces. Urlang's menu, for example, has to have every button manually placed off to the side like it is, complicating things in a couple of annoying ways. After all the drama with that stupid character button (see above mini-rant under Fast Travel) I didn't want to try sticking another button into every scene either, particularly with how visibly slow the Time display pops in (which is literally just a single call to an 8 line function...). So...I made talking to people pass time. If it's annoying enough, I can try the button option, since doing that would only add a few lines of code to each scene...or each main area at least. Obviously a bad idea to add it in some places, as advancing time inside a sex scene would do horrible things to the code. I was just trying to keep the number of things the engine has to do in each scene down to a bare minimum, since the engine is slower than an old lady collecting molasses from frozen trees in the dead of winter already...
Maybe have diffrent areas playes can visit and travel between? like COC explotation with random events like kidnapping, enslavemnt etc what it comes to lag you can have different maps to load between if the engine allows it
- Mar 30, 2019
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Exactly. So the Artifacts to choose from could be displayed as boxes or chests with colored "magic glyphs" on it. So the players and actors at first have no idea what's coming to them. But once they triggered it, they know what happens if they open the "red box with the ankh symbol" of "blue bottle with the dragon symbol" or whatever. That way, it stays a surprise in the first place.
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If you are on Mac, you'll need to move the game folder to /Applications. There's apparently a hard call in the engine that assumes it will be there. At least, that's what a nice Mac user figured out. I don't have access to a Mac to test with, so I'm basically just repeating what worked for them (and they were kind enough to report to me).
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I have no idea, then. Is it giving an error code? Or just not running at all? I trust you've extracted it...*cringe.* Yes, I know that's a stupid question, but it has to be asked so I know what's going on. Please don't hurt me
.
- Sep 21, 2017
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Is there something like a "modding skyrim for dummies" documentation available?