VN Ren'Py Abandoned Ecchi Sensei [Day 22-23 Final] [BlueCat]

[Smarmint]

Bluecat as a "scammer" doesn't make a lot of sense. Why would he have gone to all the trouble, with his team, to make such a huge game, with many hours of gameplay, and close to the record, for games here, of number of images and dialog, just to drop it off a cliff suddenly, years later? If he has some nefarious plan, it doesn't make logical sense, at all.

If he was truly scamming all of us, which I don't believe, he would have held back much of his content, and just released a little at a time on a regular schedule, and he would be making lots more income, and with a lot less work.

It is clear that Bluecat, unfortunately, delegated way too much control of the game to his team members, which are not accountable at all because their name is not on the game, and they don't have to defend their (lack) of work, so he has to just wait around for them to finish all their work, just like the rest of us.

I don't know how he sets up the financials, whether he pays the team each month, or pays then for work submitted, but however he is doing it, there doesn't seem to be much incentive by the team members to produce. I know game VN development is not really a job like most of us think of it, but even as a freelancer, 10 months of (almost) nothing would get pretty much any other programmer replaced.

Like pretty most people here, I don't see much light at the end of the tunnel anytime soon. I am quite sure that 3 months from now, there will be nothing new other than a status update or two that "work is happening". I don't think Bluecat has any idea himself whether it will be next month or in 6 months, or longer.

The best way forward for the game is to hire someone else, pay them enough so that you get an accomplished programmer and RenPy developer, and have them reprogram the game from scratch. With all the renders and dialog completed, and very few (none) meaningful choices, it is a piece of cake, really. Plus, this new person would already know how to compress images, so the release will be much smaller. The size of the game is 95% images, not the code.
Also, if Bluecat he has a close relationship with his other team member(s), keep them on as an "assistant" and give them very little responsibility. Maybe just translation or story ideas.

 

[Skummy Ecchi]

Rando I'm not quite sure what you mean by cleaning up, if you mean removing every other patch that isn't just Month 1 then maybe? If its a naming issue I can talk with Redcat on how to properly name files for update to update yez.

Beyond that, Bluecat had a lot of work to do this merge, adding much more text in all the features he wanted to fully implement. I dunno what else he did beyond that, but he did do more work than you're giving credit for, once everything was finally pushed together. The updates should be back to regular schedule afterwards, not faster as you would like, because while Bluecat already has those assets in place? He always has, he's always been months ahead of his team in terms of progress, and thus he's never been a blockage in the system.

Whenever this is over it will be a return to normalcy, not expediency. I get that there is little hope for this ending, I really do, so that's why I'm just saying to chillax and not worry too much. I have no idea when this saga is ending, but I'd rather we all be relaxed than fighting over nonsense .

If that's all I'll be off,

Stay Ecchi!

~Skummy Out

 

[baloneysammich]

and had almost a whole year to write and render new stuff... if there will be no fast updates after the merge finally shows up, we know he was just a lazy cat enjoing the free money...

Sadly, this only holds true if BlueCat was the 'bottleneck' before the merge, which seems unlikely given the current state of affairs.

Edit: Skummy beat me to the punch.

 

[Deleted member 440241]

If its a naming issue I can talk with Redcat on how to properly name files for update to update yez.

This would clear up questions about week 3's patch being named Day 20-21.

 

[Mab's Thrall22]

So, I just decided to poke my head into here and see if I made the right decision to end my support at the end of June and it looks like I did. As far as work being done, even though I no longer support this project, I still have access to the Discord. So, I poked my head in there and it looks like no work is being done. If the Gitlab notifications are anything to go by to determine workflow, there has not been any commitments since July 20th, which is about two weeks. Other than the Gitlab thing there is no proof that any work is actually being done. The rest of the channel is something I have seen over and over again when projects get to this point. The people on there posting about random bullshit, and when one person decides to even mention Month 1's status or potential release, they get bombarded with a "how dare you?!" attitude or are not even acknowledged at all. This whole thing has become one giant shitshow, and personally I think everyone should just walk away and forget about it for awhile.

 

[RandoCard3]

Rando I'm not quite sure what you mean by cleaning up, if you mean removing every other patch that isn't just Month 1 then maybe? If its a naming issue I can talk with Redcat on how to properly name files for update to update yez.

Much appreciated.

 

[Construct]

If bluecat has written all the story and already rendered the images, as he should while waiting for his team to (apparently) rebuild the whole game and if they really put the emphasis on streamlining future updates with features that can easily be integrated into new updates, then the programming should really be a matter of a few weeks. I admit I don‘t know what methods people use to get their dialogue and rendered scenes into renpy, but to me it seems that it should be mostly a copy and paste job by now. They could have already written the next script while waiting for the project manager to recover. Even if the script requires translation, that should not be a problem since there are loads of people out there who do translation jobs.
If the story writing and the rendering is not the bottleneck, then the programming shouldn‘t be much of an issue.

 

[baloneysammich]

When the merge jobs, and we get back to regular updates, what are the chances of "RedCat" cleaning up the patch page to avoid further confusion? I don't mind helping people asking about what to do, but when there's an obvious fix, I don't see why that shouldn't be used.

Even back in the day the confusion caused by the patch naming scheme was well known. I got the impression Latecomer was responsible for the naming, because he responded with a refusal to do anything about it. So unless someone else has usurped that responsibility I wouldn't hold out much hope for change.

Actually this reminds me of some of Latecomer's other behaviour at the time, and I lately got the impression somewhere that he is the lead developer. If this is correct, all the development struggles suddenly make sense to me, and I find myself much more sympathetic towards BC.

but to me it seems that it should be mostly a copy and paste job by now.

IIRC Bluecat writes the script in German though, so even if he's written several game weeks of script it will still effectively need to be completely rewritten.

 

[Construct]

IIRC Bluecat writes the script in German though, so even if he's written several game weeks of script it will still effectively need to be completely rewritten.

Hire a translator then. That‘s not an excuse, in my opinion. So yeah, as was said: Updates won’t be faster because apparently nothing was done in the downtime to speed up future updates.

Last time I checked his patreon, he had a goal up where he wanted to found a company. I wouldn‘t want to put my money towards that, seeing his inability to manage such a small team and his unwillingness to communicate with his patrons. I‘d probably have more sympathy if the dev was a team and not “just Bluecat“. At this point, he is just a man with a fantasy (it‘s easy to imagine how the this game is literally just how he imagines his life should be.) and he hired other people to realize it.

 

[df223]

Fuck my life what the fuck happenned somebody tell me please i was waiting the next update to play from week 1

 

[Mab's Thrall22]

Even back in the day the confusion caused by the patch naming scheme was well known. I got the impression Latecomer was responsible for the naming, because he responded with a refusal to do anything about it. So unless someone else has usurped that responsibility I wouldn't hold out much hope for change.

Actually this reminds me of some of Latecomer's other behaviour at the time, and I lately got the impression somewhere that he is the lead developer. If this is correct, all the development struggles suddenly make sense to me, and I find myself much more sympathetic towards BC.



IIRC Bluecat writes the script in German though, so even if he's written several game weeks of script it will still effectively need to be completely rewritten.

From what I can tell based on conversations I had seen on Discord, I believe Latecomer is the lead programmer and the one who was out sick. I can't say much on his behavior, but if he wouldn't budge on the naming, then I could see why he was adamant about no one else taking over the lead programmer spot. Even for just a temporary time period until he got better. Maybe he knows that someone else can do a better job than him, and then he will be replaced? Mind you, these are all just speculations, because I don't know any of these people personally. Regardless, there are massive failures on multiple levels, hence a shitshow. Alright, back to the shadows I go.

 

[The the Guy]

From what I can tell based on conversations I had seen on Discord, I believe Latecomer is the lead programmer and the one who was out sick. I can't say much on his behavior, but if he wouldn't budge on the naming, then I could see why he was adamant about no one else taking over the lead programmer spot. Even for just a temporary time period until he got better. Maybe he knows that someone else can do a better job than him, and then he will be replaced? Mind you, these are all just speculations, because I don't know any of these people personally. Regardless, there are massive failures on multiple levels, hence a shitshow. Alright, back to the shadows I go.

Not to be that asshole (I'm definitely gonna be that guy) if he cant get the jobs done I hope he's replaced

 

[baloneysammich]

So I was searching through the Discord when I stumbled upon a

You must be registered to see the links

(the link is to the first post, there are five in total) by Latecomer on June 29. Given that Latecomer is the project manager and lead programmer, I think the posts provide a very clear look into the current state of development.

FWIW, they definitely back up the claims Skummy Ecchi made about amateurism. But more to the point, they indicate a programmer who's more concerned with "playing around with the code" than producing a release, which is what I was alluding to in a previous post. They also suggest to me that development is (edit: rather, was at the time) still in a very experimental state rather than being anywhere near release. And finally, based on Latecomer's description of the codebase as "kind of janky", it's abundantly clear that those of us who believed that the W1 merge delay would result in a stable codebase for the long term were sorely mistaken.

 

[Dukez]

Month 1 will be smaller than week 1 uncompressed

This is because a revision to stop using hardcode and instead using better coding methods to reference data instead of pinging for it every time you want to execute an action. Basically unfucking a massive amount of early game code, which itself was unfucked twice now...

That and everything will be light compressed, it has minimal drops in quality.

This is good too see and was very much needed so I'm glad that's becoming a reality. I still do worry though for the future because the current coding required won't be as difficult as future systems so if it's had this many rewrites already how will he manage the stuff in the future? Here I'm specifically referring to the game apparently becoming a more sandbox experience beyond month one and while we don't know how this will end up specifically I don't think it's a stretch to say the code required will be more complex than what has been done so far. Hopefully the lessoned learned on smarter coding carries forward and we don't end up with a bunch of new coding problems.

As for why I'm still here doing this job? Simple, I don't owe anyone jack shit, but since I believe in Bluecat I want to at least protect the integrity of his work, even if he's not good at managing it. Beyond protecting that, I feel people are owed answers because not all of you are pirates, but you're here hoping that there's more info than on official channels. Therefore I'm doing what I can to provide those answers when I have them, and to sooth things over when I don't (I'm really bad at that cause I get mad easily :3).

That's pretty much it, protect Bluecat's integrity as a creator and inform you guys to the best of my ability since blue can't seem to formulate a way to do that-maybe I'm codling him and protecting him from having to? I unno. I might very well have saved him some patrons frankly, I'll never know.

It wouldn't surprise me if you saved some patrons and that's all well in good, but I think in general and this isn't directed at you by any means since I think you're more neutral / have insider info but I think people need to understand that these creators (or companies) are capable and should be defending themselves when needed because they are effectively selling you a product and it's their job to sell you on that product - fans/supporters/etc shouldn't be doing that job on behalf of them.

This tends to happen a lot though online which is sad to see tbh lol.

 

[AnimeKing314]

So I was searching through the Discord when I stumbled upon a

You must be registered to see the links

(the link is to the first post, there are five in total) by Latecomer on June 29. Given that Latecomer is the project manager and lead programmer, I think the posts provide a very clear look into the current state of development.

FWIW, they definitely back up the claims Skummy Ecchi made about amateurism. But more to the point, they indicate a programmer who's more concerned with "playing around with the code" than producing a release, which is what I was alluding to in a previous post. They also suggest to me that development is (edit: rather, was at the time) still in a very experimental state rather than being anywhere near release. And finally, based on Latecomer's description of the codebase as "kind of janky", it's abundantly clear that those of us who believed that the W1 merge delay would result in a stable codebase for the long term were sorely mistaken.

As a coder myself I can clarify what he's saying in those posts a bit (just for the sake of those who aren't) because he's talking out of his ass a little bit. So, he's right that having a variable for every single choice is a little much and reducing the number of variables makes for better workflow but that's about all it accomplishes. Each variable only takes up a miniscule amount of space (24 bytes for any regular variable) so it doesn't actually have much impact on the size of saves (nor on the size of the game). The two things he says that are total bullshit (and truly show him to be an amateur) are saying that using a list rather than a series of varibles will make the saves even smaller and that this is what's causing the saves to not port over. In python, even an empty list is 64 bytes, then each element in the list adds the same 24 bytes that you would use if you'd just used a variable instead. So overall, using a list actually makes the saves larger, not smaller (granted it's easier to access for the programmer, my issue isn't with him using lists but about him lying about what they accomplish).

As for the saves not porting over, this has absolutely nothing to do with the variable types or how many there are. Given they are using lists now, the easiest solution would be to use

You must be registered to see the links

. Instead (looking at the save directory in appdata), it seems what they actually did was rename for the save folder for each week to the same name so that the next week sees the save data in folder and loads it. In theory I think this would actually work (though I'd need to ask someone who knows more to be sure) but obviously this method has caused problems and I don't know why they use it when there is an easier solution.

 

[Kulman]

I don't know why they use it when there is an easier solution.

I think I know.

Spoiler: Bluecat HQ

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[Jushak]

As a coder myself I can clarify what he's saying in those posts a bit (just for the sake of those who aren't) because he's talking out of his ass a little bit. So, he's right that having a variable for every single choice is a little much and reducing the number of variables makes for better workflow but that's about all it accomplishes. Each variable only takes up a miniscule amount of space (24 bytes for any regular variable) so it doesn't actually have much impact on the size of saves (nor on the size of the game). The two things he says that are total bullshit (and truly show him to be an amateur) are saying that using a list rather than a series of varibles will make the saves even smaller and that this is what's causing the saves to not port over. In python, even an empty list is 64 bytes, then each element in the list adds the same 24 bytes that you would use if you'd just used a variable instead. So overall, using a list actually makes the saves larger, not smaller (granted it's easier to access for the programmer, my issue isn't with him using lists but about him lying about what they accomplish).

As for the saves not porting over, this has absolutely nothing to do with the variable types or how many there are. Given they are using lists now, the easiest solution would be to use

You must be registered to see the links

. Instead (looking at the save directory in appdata), it seems what they actually did was rename for the save folder for each week to the same name so that the next week sees the save data in folder and loads it. In theory I think this would actually work (though I'd need to ask someone who knows more to be sure) but obviously this method has caused problems and I don't know why they use it when there is an easier solution.

I feel that's a problem with Ren'Py and bigger projects / newbie developers in general. The more ambitious the dev(s) get, the more the fact they chose existing platform and try to force stuff on top of it without really knowing what they're doing starts biting them in the ass.

Then again, at least they get something done I guess. I have several project ideas in my head, but mysteriously never seem to have the time / drive to work on them, no matter how elaborate systems I think up when I can't work on them.

 

[Fred Flintstone]

Well everyone has to admit that they are not trying to take money.

As Eku7 points out their revenue has shrunk to almost 1/3 whereas if they left the buggy shit as is and just slapped new content together they would very much have made A LOT more money.

So as Skummy says this is NOT evil intent or malicious profiteering, it is incompetence.

At this point it is best to just wait for them to clear this reprogram hurdle with the one benefit being that all new content will be on better framework and easier to merge. So then they can go back to production (which was pretty good levels if I recall correctly).

The other big unanswered question is how big will it be at the end of the merge? If it is too big you will need to torrent the content. Do they want to merge the next full 30 day month into one month or one merge total? Because well.... I would hope their Subs/Patrons vote no on merging anything that big. Again leading to the how the hell do you host something that big?

My random thoughts

PEACE

If they weren't trying to make money, they wouldn't have a patreon page, and wouldn't complain about early leaks to pirates.. The whole idea was to make money, I think everyone has to admit that...

 

[RandoCard3]

If they weren't trying to make money, they wouldn't have a patreon page, and wouldn't complain about early leaks to pirates.. The whole idea was to make money, I think everyone has to admit that...

They're saying that the dev are obviously not withholding updates to milk money, not that the devs don't want to make money period.

 

[jaw1986baby]

They're saying that the dev are obviously not withholding updates to milk money, not that the devs don't want to make money period.