VN Ren'Py Intertwined [v0.12.3] [Nyx]

[misfolk]

I hope you don't kill me for this, but
Can someone explain to me why it takes so long to create an episode?
Why was there talk of changing the graphics card earlier?

There are multiple steps for an episode:

1. Writing. You have to actually come up with and write all the dialogues. The more various branches and flags your VN has, the harder it is.
2. Rendering static scenes
   • Is it a new location? You need to model it (or reuse a stock asset, there's a reason why every shady back alley in VNs looks the same) and place some stuff around so it looks like a real place and not a theater set
   • Where is the light coming from? Light and shadows make your images pop, but you have to set it up so there's no weird spots anywhere
   • Are there any extras? You need to model them and pose them. It's not that hard as designing and posing your main characters and you can probably reuse some stock faces and clothes, but you still have to do this
   • And then, for every scene, you need to pose your main characters, adjust their expressions, adjust the camera and render a shot. Repeat for every couple of lines. You can reuse transition screens, but people will notice when you start recycling character shots
   • Is one of your characters upside down? Or wet? Is there a strong wind? Why does their hairdo look like it's made of plastic, then?
3. Rendering animations. It's a porn game, so people want to see animations of people fucking. And animations are really hard to render and model: you want physics like inverse kinematics and soft body simulation, or it will look like that scene from Team America. Soft body parts flap each at their own frequency, so you need a longer loop, and a longer loop means more frames to render
4. Putting it all together. Now you actually have to sit down and code the scenes:
   • Show image 12345
   • Have MC say "..."
   • Have MC say "..."
   • Show image 12346
   • Have LI say "..."
   • Have LI say "..."
   • Show image 1237
   • Show menu with choices "A..." and "B..."
   • If A:
     • Add 1 point to some counter
     • Show image 12348a001
     • Have MC say "..."
   • and so on for thousands of lines of dialogue
5. Looking for bugs and redoing your choices. Did you notice I made a mistake in my coding example? You might also realize you need an extra branch because your MC did A, B, but not C. Or some scene just doesn't have the right punch when you actually play it, so you need to rewrite it. Or you notice something wrong with one of your images, so you have to rerender or even repose one of the scenes.

 

[anonnyscouse]

I like the game and have no problem with long development times, but there's no hiding from the fact that some of the delays come from Nyx changing the plans and rewriting the game she originally planned. I'm not referring to the rewrite and recode of the earlier episodes but big changes to her original plan for the game that has caused rewrites throughout the development.

Originally Alexis was only meant to be one of the quick fuck options who while providing short-term fun offer nothing but tripwires to the stories of the main characters (like the girl (can't remember the name) who fucks MC just to annoy Cara). Changing her to a main character not only changes the storyline around her but also around Erynn and Layla.

Originally Nikki was meant to be killed by being run over by a car. That not only means rewriting to keep Nikki in the game but also rushes the Cara storyline as they both had to be at the same place when MC makes the decision as to who he wants to be with (if either) between them. Cara being a virgin should have been a slowburn in the same way as Layla, by speeding up the relationship with Cara it intensifies the frustration with slowburns as their virginity can no longer be used as a reason for their slowness to allow sexual contact.

Erynn's story has significantly changed too, the corruption tag on the game was meant to be linked to her and you could team up with Ethan and push her into his plans, while potentially opening her up to be more willing to do stuff with you, or you could white knight and hope to get her as the nice guy. Probably due to potential issues with the anti-NTR brigade Nyx changed her mind about this. This leaves just the nice guy route and also messes up the Zach character as it doesn't matter what his RP is he will still betray MC and contribute to him getting beaten up. If the original plan was still there Zach would just be the facilitator to bring MC and Ethan together to decide which route MC takes with Ethan and Erynn.

Assuming Nyx had a storyboard built for how this game was meant to progress making these significant changes to the game changes the story considerably and the original storyboard would be redundant at this stage. We see this from frequent mentions in devlogs of rewriting scenes she's not happy with and moving scenes around from where she planned to have them as they no longer fit with where the story has gone.

 

[zokzuk]

There are multiple steps for an episode:

1. Writing. You have to actually come up with and write all the dialogues. The more various branches and flags your VN has, the harder it is.
2. Rendering static scenes
   • Is it a new location? You need to model it (or reuse a stock asset, there's a reason why every shady back alley in VNs looks the same) and place some stuff around so it looks like a real place and not a theater set
   • Where is the light coming from? Light and shadows make your images pop, but you have to set it up so there's no weird spots anywhere
   • Are there any extras? You need to model them and pose them. It's not that hard as designing and posing your main characters and you can probably reuse some stock faces and clothes, but you still have to do this
   • And then, for every scene, you need to pose your main characters, adjust their expressions, adjust the camera and render a shot. Repeat for every couple of lines. You can reuse transition screens, but people will notice when you start recycling character shots
   • Is one of your characters upside down? Or wet? Is there a strong wind? Why does their hairdo look like it's made of plastic, then?
3. Rendering animations. It's a porn game, so people want to see animations of people fucking. And animations are really hard to render and model: you want physics like inverse kinematics and soft body simulation, or it will look like that scene from Team America. Soft body parts flap each at their own frequency, so you need a longer loop, and a longer loop means more frames to render
4. Putting it all together. Now you actually have to sit down and code the scenes:
   • Show image 12345
   • Have MC say "..."
   • Have MC say "..."
   • Show image 12346
   • Have LI say "..."
   • Have LI say "..."
   • Show image 1237
   • Show menu with choices "A..." and "B..."
   • If A:
     • Add 1 point to some counter
     • Show image 12348a001
     • Have MC say "..."
   • and so on for thousands of lines of dialogue
5. Looking for bugs and redoing your choices. Did you notice I made a mistake in my coding example? You might also realize you need an extra branch because your MC did A, B, but not C. Or some scene just doesn't have the right punch when you actually play it, so you need to rewrite it. Or you notice something wrong with one of your images, so you have to rerender or even repose one of the scenes.

There's actually a lot of work to do with this. Thank you very much for the explanation.
Now it all makes sense.

 

[Jace_Herondale]

I like the game and have no problem with long development times, but there's no hiding from the fact that some of the delays come from Nyx changing the plans and rewriting the game she originally planned. I'm not referring to the rewrite and recode of the earlier episodes but big changes to her original plan for the game that has caused rewrites throughout the development.

Originally Alexis was only meant to be one of the quick fuck options who while providing short-term fun offer nothing but tripwires to the stories of the main characters (like the girl (can't remember the name) who fucks MC just to annoy Cara). Changing her to a main character not only changes the storyline around her but also around Erynn and Layla.

Originally Nikki was meant to be killed by being run over by a car. That not only means rewriting to keep Nikki in the game but also rushes the Cara storyline as they both had to be at the same place when MC makes the decision as to who he wants to be with (if either) between them. Cara being a virgin should have been a slowburn in the same way as Layla, by speeding up the relationship with Cara it intensifies the frustration with slowburns as their virginity can no longer be used as a reason for their slowness to allow sexual contact.

Erynn's story has significantly changed too, the corruption tag on the game was meant to be linked to her and you could team up with Ethan and push her into his plans, while potentially opening her up to be more willing to do stuff with you, or you could white knight and hope to get her as the nice guy. Probably due to potential issues with the anti-NTR brigade Nyx changed her mind about this. This leaves just the nice guy route and also messes up the Zach character as it doesn't matter what his RP is he will still betray MC and contribute to him getting beaten up. If the original plan was still there Zach would just be the facilitator to bring MC and Ethan together to decide which route MC takes with Ethan and Erynn.

Assuming Nyx had a storyboard built for how this game was meant to progress making these significant changes to the game changes the story considerably and the original storyboard would be redundant at this stage. We see this from frequent mentions in devlogs of rewriting scenes she's not happy with and moving scenes around from where she planned to have them as they no longer fit with where the story has gone.

How do you know all this?

 

[anonnyscouse]

How do you know all this?

Nyx has mentioned all of this during development, either back when she was on this site or during her devlogs.

 

[LSC82]

I like the game and have no problem with long development times, but there's no hiding from the fact that some of the delays come from Nyx changing the plans and rewriting the game she originally planned. I'm not referring to the rewrite and recode of the earlier episodes but big changes to her original plan for the game that has caused rewrites throughout the development.

Originally Alexis was only meant to be one of the quick fuck options who while providing short-term fun offer nothing but tripwires to the stories of the main characters (like the girl (can't remember the name) who fucks MC just to annoy Cara). Changing her to a main character not only changes the storyline around her but also around Erynn and Layla.

Originally Nikki was meant to be killed by being run over by a car. That not only means rewriting to keep Nikki in the game but also rushes the Cara storyline as they both had to be at the same place when MC makes the decision as to who he wants to be with (if either) between them. Cara being a virgin should have been a slowburn in the same way as Layla, by speeding up the relationship with Cara it intensifies the frustration with slowburns as their virginity can no longer be used as a reason for their slowness to allow sexual contact.

Erynn's story has significantly changed too, the corruption tag on the game was meant to be linked to her and you could team up with Ethan and push her into his plans, while potentially opening her up to be more willing to do stuff with you, or you could white knight and hope to get her as the nice guy. Probably due to potential issues with the anti-NTR brigade Nyx changed her mind about this. This leaves just the nice guy route and also messes up the Zach character as it doesn't matter what his RP is he will still betray MC and contribute to him getting beaten up. If the original plan was still there Zach would just be the facilitator to bring MC and Ethan together to decide which route MC takes with Ethan and Erynn.

Assuming Nyx had a storyboard built for how this game was meant to progress making these significant changes to the game changes the story considerably and the original storyboard would be redundant at this stage. We see this from frequent mentions in devlogs of rewriting scenes she's not happy with and moving scenes around from where she planned to have them as they no longer fit with where the story has gone.

Seems like the game became a lot less "daring" as it went along, Nyx seems to like her own creations a little too much to see them called bitches or whores... which would inevitably happen if the game stuck to dark stuff.
So every girl is nice and "good" and the game became more vanilla for it.

 

[anonnyscouse]

Seems like the game became a lot less "daring" as it went along, Nyx seems to like her own creations a little too much to see them called bitches or whores... which would inevitably happen if the game stuck to dark stuff.
So every girl is nice and "good" and the game became more vanilla for it.

I think it's more that she becomes too attached to characters, I'm not sure Alexis would have got too much abuse for just being a quick fuck character, every game with slowburns need that type of character to keep the less patient in the fanbase happy. Nikki would have only been a more sympathetic character by being killed off.

If anything the change hurts the character of Erynn, she's in danger of falling into the Maya from BaD level of dislike if she doesn't develop more ownership of the sex tape issue. But because Nyx has become attached to her character she doesn't want to see her hurt which the corruption route would have done. Yes some people would call her a whore, but she'd only be a whore if the player made her one so it wouldn't be a widespread opinion.

 

[Elduriel]

There are multiple steps for an episode:

1. Writing. You have to actually come up with and write all the dialogues. The more various branches and flags your VN has, the harder it is.
2. Rendering static scenes
   • Is it a new location? You need to model it (or reuse a stock asset, there's a reason why every shady back alley in VNs looks the same) and place some stuff around so it looks like a real place and not a theater set
   • Where is the light coming from? Light and shadows make your images pop, but you have to set it up so there's no weird spots anywhere
   • Are there any extras? You need to model them and pose them. It's not that hard as designing and posing your main characters and you can probably reuse some stock faces and clothes, but you still have to do this
   • And then, for every scene, you need to pose your main characters, adjust their expressions, adjust the camera and render a shot. Repeat for every couple of lines. You can reuse transition screens, but people will notice when you start recycling character shots
   • Is one of your characters upside down? Or wet? Is there a strong wind? Why does their hairdo look like it's made of plastic, then?
3. Rendering animations. It's a porn game, so people want to see animations of people fucking. And animations are really hard to render and model: you want physics like inverse kinematics and soft body simulation, or it will look like that scene from Team America. Soft body parts flap each at their own frequency, so you need a longer loop, and a longer loop means more frames to render
4. Putting it all together. Now you actually have to sit down and code the scenes:
   • Show image 12345
   • Have MC say "..."
   • Have MC say "..."
   • Show image 12346
   • Have LI say "..."
   • Have LI say "..."
   • Show image 1237
   • Show menu with choices "A..." and "B..."
   • If A:
     • Add 1 point to some counter
     • Show image 12348a001
     • Have MC say "..."
   • and so on for thousands of lines of dialogue
5. Looking for bugs and redoing your choices. Did you notice I made a mistake in my coding example? You might also realize you need an extra branch because your MC did A, B, but not C. Or some scene just doesn't have the right punch when you actually play it, so you need to rewrite it. Or you notice something wrong with one of your images, so you have to rerender or even repose one of the scenes.

and in this particular game there are lots of branching choices with different outcomes, so the dev needs to account for that as well, meaning a lot more of the same what you just described (compared to a fairly straightforward AVN with a linear plot)

 

[Jericho85]

I like the game and have no problem with long development times, but there's no hiding from the fact that some of the delays come from Nyx changing the plans and rewriting the game she originally planned. I'm not referring to the rewrite and recode of the earlier episodes but big changes to her original plan for the game that has caused rewrites throughout the development.

Originally Alexis was only meant to be one of the quick fuck options who while providing short-term fun offer nothing but tripwires to the stories of the main characters (like the girl (can't remember the name) who fucks MC just to annoy Cara). Changing her to a main character not only changes the storyline around her but also around Erynn and Layla.

Originally Nikki was meant to be killed by being run over by a car. That not only means rewriting to keep Nikki in the game but also rushes the Cara storyline as they both had to be at the same place when MC makes the decision as to who he wants to be with (if either) between them. Cara being a virgin should have been a slowburn in the same way as Layla, by speeding up the relationship with Cara it intensifies the frustration with slowburns as their virginity can no longer be used as a reason for their slowness to allow sexual contact.

Erynn's story has significantly changed too, the corruption tag on the game was meant to be linked to her and you could team up with Ethan and push her into his plans, while potentially opening her up to be more willing to do stuff with you, or you could white knight and hope to get her as the nice guy. Probably due to potential issues with the anti-NTR brigade Nyx changed her mind about this. This leaves just the nice guy route and also messes up the Zach character as it doesn't matter what his RP is he will still betray MC and contribute to him getting beaten up. If the original plan was still there Zach would just be the facilitator to bring MC and Ethan together to decide which route MC takes with Ethan and Erynn.

Assuming Nyx had a storyboard built for how this game was meant to progress making these significant changes to the game changes the story considerably and the original storyboard would be redundant at this stage. We see this from frequent mentions in dev logs of rewriting scenes she's not happy with and moving scenes around from where she planned to have them as they no longer fit with where the story has gone.

I get this feeling too. In one of the more recent Status Updates, Nyx mentioned something about "still debating which LIs get content and who won't", then another mentioned changing things, rewriting things, and dropping things.

Seems to me that Nyx doesn't do a whole lot of planning or storyboarding with these episodes. I hope Nyx is sticking to some kind of vision because otherwise that's bad. Stuff like that leads to writers block, lots of rewrites, meandering plots, and eventual burn out. Writing without planning and outlines is part of the reason why GRRM still hasn't finished Winds of Winter after a over a decade of "writing" while Sanderson has written something like 15 novels and several novellas in the same time frame.

I like Stone Fox Studio's approach. On the About Stone Fox Studios section of their patreon they wrote, "We are both perfectionists, but our "perfection" may not align with everyone's. We pledge to be faithful to our vision and deliver stories with arcs that are planned from the beginning, as opposed to "winging it as we go."

I tend to trust writers that have a plan more than I trust writers that just wing it.

 

[Jace_Herondale]

Nyx has mentioned all of this during development, either back when she was on this site or during her devlogs.

Really. I can believe most of it, but killing Nki off? That sounds weird. Also, I wouldn't mind if Alexis had a smaller role. But Nicki must live she is my top 3 LI

 

[anonnyscouse]

Really. I can believe most of it, but killing Nki off? That sounds weird. Also, I wouldn't mind if Alexis had a smaller role. But Nicki must live she is my top 3 LI

This is from Nyx herself before she deleted her F95 account:

I'm glad I kept her in the game then..
Here is a little background info I was struggling with big time:

Nikki was supposed to die in that car accident.. I even made the renders for it.. MC felt so much guilt and after a while he just couldn't handle it and went back to live with his mom.
But I pussied out.. I just couldn't do it.. I like the character too much myself..

Was it a mistake.. Maybe.. Would it have been better that way.. Maybe..

 

[LSC82]

I think it's more that she becomes too attached to characters, I'm not sure Alexis would have got too much abuse for just being a quick fuck character, every game with slowburns need that type of character to keep the less patient in the fanbase happy. Nikki would have only been a more sympathetic character by being killed off.

If anything the change hurts the character of Erynn, she's in danger of falling into the Maya from BaD level of dislike if she doesn't develop more ownership of the sex tape issue. But because Nyx has become attached to her character she doesn't want to see her hurt which the corruption route would have done. Yes some people would call her a whore, but she'd only be a whore if the player made her one so it wouldn't be a widespread opinion.

She used to "defend the honor" of her characters when criticized in this forum.
For example one of the early days "problem" was people calling Erynn a bitch for laughing at the MCs proposal(i never thought much of it, but some really hated her and were heated about it).
Nyx decided to clear things up with a "what really happened that day" scene that was designed to have Erynn come out smelling like roses.
Sure, things like keeping Alexis a rando would certainly get less grief, but after she made the decision to make her connected to other characters she's been trying non-stop to "clear her record".
Same thing with Emily being called "the bad mom who sent her kid away", she keeps re-writing that intro to clear her(honestly i think she finally did it).

So at times it's difficult to understand which takes precedence, the fact that she doesn't like her (female)characters hurt or the fact that people perceive them as bitches or whores.
Fair to say she doesn't really like either thing...

Had no idea Maya was disliked... poor thing, what did she do wrong?

Really. I can believe most of it, but killing Nki off? That sounds weird. Also, I wouldn't mind if Alexis had a smaller role. But Nicki must live she is my top 3 LI

As someone who likes Nikki, her death was suppoused to be the thing that makes the MC come back home, it's common knowledge.
She escaped from getting run over by a car so we had to throw Andres under the bus instead lol.

 

[Jace_Herondale]

As someone who likes Nikki, her death was suppoused to be the thing that makes the MC come back home, it's common knowledge.
She escaped from getting run over by a car so we had to throw Andres under the bus instead lol.

Maybe I am not here long enough (I think around v0.7) but I didn't know that. And I don't give a shit about Andres so I am very happy with this course of events

 

[Elduriel]

I get this feeling too. In one of the more recent Status Updates, Nyx mentioned something about "still debating which LIs get content and who won't", then another mentioned changing things, rewriting things, and dropping things.

Seems to me that Nyx doesn't do a whole lot of planning or storyboarding with these episodes. I hope Nyx is sticking to some kind of vision because otherwise that's bad. Stuff like that leads to writers block, lots of rewrites, meandering plots, and eventual burn out. Writing without planning and outlines is part of the reason why GRRM still hasn't finished Winds of Winter after a over a decade of "writing" while Sanderson has written something like 15 novels and several novellas in the same time frame.

I like Stone Fox Studio's approach. On the About Stone Fox Studios section of their patreon they wrote, "We are both perfectionists, but our "perfection" may not align with everyone's. We pledge to be faithful to our vision and deliver stories with arcs that are planned from the beginning, as opposed to "winging it as we go."

I tend to trust writers that have a plan more than I trust writers that just wing it.

fucking GRRM, I hope Nyx won't write herself into a corner like he did... tho the plot is more complex than your average avn, it's at least not as complicated as asoiaf so there is hope

 

[Jericho85]

fucking GRRM, I hope Nyx won't write herself into a corner like he did... tho the plot is more complex than your average avn, it's at least not as complicated as asoiaf so there is hope

I read a GRRM Interview a while ago (back when I naively assumed that ASOIAF 6 would be finished one day), where he said something like he doesn't keep notes. That all of his "notes" are in his head and that he does all of his work on an old IBM running Wordstar 4.0. He's also allegedly (on at least one occasion) nearly finished Winds of Winter then completely scrapped it and started over. This is a consequence of not outlining. It drives me nuts how a good writer can ruin his reputation so profoundly by such a fixable problem.

And Intertwined is complex as a consequence. I'm not even sure I'd call it "complex" even... Maybe more "convoluted" or "cluttered" than it is complex only because Nyx keeps changing things and as a result, things get more confusing than they need to be. Not to mention that we're bouncing from subplot to subplot rather than having a clear arc that ties everything together. I would have 100% been happier with Nikki dying if that was what Nyx's original vision for the story, but I'm willing to bet that there isn't much of the "original vision" left in Intertwined anymore, after all the rewrites. I'd be surprised if Nyx even has an ending in mind yet.

And don't get me wrong. For all my criticism, I do like Intertwined. I'd probably even say it's in my personal top 10 if only for the flirting on the Valeria or Layla routes. I think Nyx is better than most at dialogue and character writing. But I'm really not a fan of Nyx's writing discipline as it appears to be.

 

[Pr0GamerJohnny]

Had no idea Maya was disliked... poor thing, what did she do wrong?

as one of the minority defenders - to quickly further derail this OTHER games thread heh, you see it a lot over there, mostly from two cabals: 1) The Quinn Acolytes 2) The Josy mah waifu army.

The former are edgelords and Maya is too vanilla and boring for them (which ironically is why I cant stand Quinn, she's written like a creative writing major's freshman project).

The latter see Maya as an obstacle to a permanent pairing with their smooth-skinned-spinner, Maya having excessive emotional baggage and an ugly texture normal map. (How egregious!)

I love Maya, she's interesting, has backstory and drama, and actual tension; especially during her sex scenes.



I wish there was a similar character over here, Cara had potential for this, but I kinda lost interest after she turned into this game's "Josy".
I guess Erynn is the best hope for emotional baggage and high-drama writing.

On the other hand, BaD is sorely lacking a "Layla" style character - aka the one you want as your girlfriend - cute, fun, but some personality beyond just disposable harem-fare. Appearance-wise too, there's no analog - probably my biggest complaint with BaD and praise for InterT - majority of characters appearance there aren't "attractive in a natural way" - it's super heavy stage makeup, half the cast look like vegas strippers.

 

[LSC82]

as one of the minority defenders - to quickly further derail this OTHER games thread heh, you see it a lot over there, mostly from two cabals: 1) The Quinn Acolytes 2) The Josy mah waifu army.

The former are edgelords and Maya is too vanilla and boring for them (which ironically is why I cant stand Quinn, she's written like a creative writing major's freshman project).

The latter see Maya as an obstacle to a permanent pairing with their smooth-skinned-spinner, Maya having excessive emotional baggage and an ugly texture normal map. (How egregious!)

I love Maya, she's interesting, has backstory and drama, and actual tension; especially during her sex scenes.



I wish there was a similar character over here, Cara had potential for this, but I kinda lost interest after she turned into this game's "Josy".
I guess Erynn is the best hope for emotional baggage and high-drama writing.

On the other hand, BaD is sorely lacking a "Layla" style character - aka the one you want as your girlfriend - cute, fun, but some personality beyond just disposable harem-fare. Appearance-wise too, there's no analog - probably my biggest complaint with BaD and praise for InterT - majority of characters appearance there aren't "attractive in a natural way" - it's super heavy stage makeup, half the cast look like vegas strippers.

Thanks for the answer, the Badik thread is too much for me and i was unaware.

And i agree, Maya is a romantic girl trying to figure out who she is, there's some baggage that comes with this of course, but she's a nice loving girl.
Her texture is heavy on pores on extreme close ups , but then more up to date(technologically speaking) characters often have skin that's too shinny(Josy is here no doubt).

Steering back to Intertwined.
Erynn no doubt is the one that gets more storyline and depth beyond "being super in love with this guy", but then we have to wait until Nyx feels like allowing the relationship to progress .
Elena has some depth too in that her loyalties and her desires are in conflict.

Cara was made interchangeable with her sister so her problems and scenes are very similar in spirit hers, you are just choosing the flavor of your topping, between the outgoing girl who likes sports and working out and the more quiet one.
Layla, agreed, she's great... and badly underutilized lately, hopefully that will change in the coming update.

 

[kezguyfour]

just started the game and I'm assuming there is no music because the developer only added music into later episodes?

 

[Canto Forte]

No distractions ... of any kinds ...
You go straight into that hottie and explode deep inside her!

 

[LMMFAO]

What's with all the Alexis hate lately? Y'all been dragging my woman something fierce.