VN Ren'Py Abandoned Kingdom of Deception [v0.14.2.2] [Hreinn Games]

[maveric619]

Before everything fall apart, it was something akin to a breath of fresh air

Now? Not even both the game and the CG gallery worth anything, not even microsecond fap

Has it really changed that drastically?

I haven't played this since like before the pandemic started.

Fuck bro time is slipping away too fast

 

[CourierNPC]

Has it really changed that drastically?

I haven't played this since like before the pandemic started.

Fuck bro time is slipping away too fast

Drastically is a slight understatement

2020s weren't a good time for Kingdom of Deception and there never will be a good time going forward either

Don't expect anything good coming our way from now on... just sayin'

 

[Jinsoyun]

Has it really changed that drastically?

I haven't played this since like before the pandemic started.

Fuck bro time is slipping away too fast

Nomo can still draw well when he wants to. Ylva looked very nicely in the first part of this update. The problem comes form the simplified or sketchy style artwork that can be easily modified and fitted into smaller scenes. In theory it could be a good way to spice up the camp life a bit, but in practice Hreinn's coder can't handle these modular events well and so even tho the art was done in march, the writing was done in april, we still have no clue when the last third of this patch will be ready. In 0.12 this took them about 8 months...
So right now the "filler" that was supposed to be a bit of bonus to the main dish took at least a full year (so far) of dev time away from the main content in the span of 2 patches. This isn't what anyone wanted.

 

[rockon123]

I swear the programmer is lazy AF

 

[Brother Penetrātus]

I swear the programmer is lazy AF

No, he is incompetent. Even I can see that despite the fact I don't know shit about coding. (In comparison to others. I know a thing or two.)
Honestly: I would never say I could do better, thats absolutely not the case with my amateurish skills, but looking back at the past 2 years, I'm not sure if I would perform worse than he did.
Remember when Nomo once said he (the coder) had a blackout and due to this, he had to start over again? In retrospectiv, I'm pretty sure he just messed up and had to start over again. And this (hypothetical) pattern seems to repeat for the past 2 years.

(Edit: Grammar. My english sucks like my skills in coding. )

 

[nyqz]

No, he is incompetent. Even I can see that despite the fact I don't know shit about coding. (In comparison to others. I know a thing or two.)
Honestly: I would never say I could do better, thats absolutely not the case with my amateurish skills, but looking back at the past 2 years, I'm not sure if I would perform worse than he did.
Remember when Nomo once said he (the coder) had a blackout and due to this, he had to start over again? In retrospectiv, I'm pretty sure he just messed up and had to start over again. And this (hypothetical) pattern seems to repeat for the past 2 years.

(Edit: Grammar. My english sucks like my skills in coding. )

Could you tell me a bit more about what's bad with the coding?

 

[Enigmanic]

Could you tell me a bit more about what's bad with the coding?

RenPy is a simple engine to work with, based on Python. Yet it takes NDS several months to do minimal work.

 

[Jinsoyun]

I don't know anything about programing, so i'm asking everyone to correct me or provide any more information on this topic, but the way i see it as an outsider, they basically have two options for the modular scenes:

1. Just use full separate pictures to illustrate the scene and just switch to a full other picture if something like a facial expression or hand placement changes. More or less what they have been doing all along in the h-scenes.
2. Have most of the scene as a "background" and add those small changes over it as a layer. Some of the groping pictures work like this, normal conversations and clothing options do this too and there are a few hundred games using this method in this site for further reference.

In theory, once the art assets are done, the writer and the coder could make new scenes on their own and the artist could work on new stuff, so this should be a good method.

What technicality am i missing here? By the looks of it, this should not be a problem that takes 4-8 months to do each time. Is there some kind of back-end reason or something i just didn't consider yet?
I'm genuinely asking this, because i've expressed a very negative stance against NDS and i don't want it to be out of pure ignorance.

 

[souldead341]

I don't know anything about programing, so i'm asking everyone to correct me or provide any more information on this topic, but the way i see it as an outsider, they basically have two options for the modular scenes:

1. Just use full separate pictures to illustrate the scene and just switch to a full other picture if something like a facial expression or hand placement changes. More or less what they have been doing all along in the h-scenes.
2. Have most of the scene as a "background" and add those small changes over it as a layer. Some of the groping pictures work like this, normal conversations and clothing options do this too and there are a few hundred games using this method in this site for further reference.

In theory, once the art assets are done, the writer and the coder could make new scenes on their own and the artist could work on new stuff, so this should be a good method.

What technicality am i missing here? By the looks of it, this should not be a problem that takes 4-8 months to do each time. Is there some kind of back-end reason or something i just didn't consider yet?
I'm genuinely asking this, because i've expressed a very negative stance against NDS and i don't want it to be out of pure ignorance.

Well, you've gotten it pretty much right. There's literally no reason the modular scenes need the artist (Nomo) involved after the assets are created. The way the art assets should be made is just like you said, though IIRC they have a lot of them in Hreinn's games are pre combined layers for each one instead of the individual layers being combined in the game itself.

But that only applies if the ARTIST is the bottleneck. I'm like many where I have a small amount of knowledge of coding (engineering course gave me some C++, Matlab, and more specialist programs), but even then I can see that the amount of time taken and "causes" of the coding delays are bullshit / amatuer at best. The one claim that a power outage caused them to have to restart is particularly bad, since ANYONE doing coding for money should be backing up their code. Basically you should be backing up your code in at least 2 locations very frequently, depending on how much you've done in a session. If you have a crash / blackout / hard drive failure then you lose minimal progress since you should have a recent backup of it.

Then there's the fact that renpy itself and python in general have a hell of a lot of free to use code examples / libraries available. So a lot of things you don't need to code from scratch, just find something to use as an example or that can be used as is.

We can only guess from the minimal news they've given for the delays, but my thoughts are that they're the procrastinator type of coder. They figure "Oh, this is easy, I can get this done in a week." So they put it off too long, hit the massive bugs, issues, or other delays. Then they need to pull an excuse out of their ass, which the most common one I've seen across all projects is the "computer died, everything lost". If they're completely amatuer that can be excusable 1-2 times but anyone with more experience or being paid for it it's not really.

 

[Brother Penetrātus]

Could you tell me a bit more about what's bad with the coding?

Since the 3 posts above summing it up quite good, there isn't much more what I could ad to the topic what wasn't said already.

 

[AlienBreeder]

G'day strangers!

While I'm aware that no noose is good noose, the notification of where a noose may or may not be isn't always unhelpful, thus:

 

[CourierNPC]

G'day strangers!

While I'm aware that no noose is good noose, the notification of where a noose may or may not be isn't always unhelpful, thus:

View attachment 1990405

I wonder why the other guy got kicked while you don't when asking for the update?

 

[AlienBreeder]

I wonder why the other guy got kicked while you don't when asking for the update?

Depends how they asked, I s'pose. Interesting to know, though. I'd go back through the pages and see when their messages stopped on discord, however that would only work if their F95 and Discord identities matched up.

 

[bitchass92]

It's kind of like watching that one coach for the patriots continue to cheat and lie about it.

 

[CourierNPC]

Depends how they asked, I s'pose. Interesting to know, though. I'd go back through the pages and see when their messages stopped on discord, however that would only work if their F95 and Discord identities matched up.

A'ight, cool. Thanks for the info

 

[Xill]

I wonder why the other guy got kicked while you don't when asking for the update?

Seems like he angered the all mighty gods unlike our friend here because he didn't say the magic words.

 

[nyqz]

they basically have two options for the modular scenes:

1. Just use full separate pictures to illustrate the scene and just switch to a full other picture if something like a facial expression or hand placement changes. More or less what they have been doing all along in the h-scenes.
2. Have most of the scene as a "background" and add those small changes over it as a layer. Some of the groping pictures work like this, normal conversations and clothing options do this too and there are a few hundred games using this method in this site for further reference.

In theory, once the art assets are done, the writer and the coder could make new scenes on their own and the artist could work on new stuff, so this should be a good method.

In theory (from the perspective of someone who knows very little about coding but a moderate amount about the other bit) there's a bit of a tradeoff here. Using full pictures makes it much, much simpler to set up the scenes in the game. You basically just make it cycle through a gallery alongside the script. The downsides are that this method makes the games file size bigger, and you need someone with at least a basic knowledge of image editing programs to put the pictures together (which I assume is still a task nomo is handling). On the other hand having a bunch of modular images that are overlaid means you can keep your filesize down and means that new scenes can be made without any input from the artist once you have enough assets built up. The problem is that (depending on how many elements are in a scene) you're now juggling a lot more things. This is probably a non-issue for an actual programmer, but for an amature who only knows enough to get renpy working it can be pretty fiddly and time consuming, which is why single images are what most games vn style games use.

 

[gzrtjhgtyhjljk]

In theory (from the perspective of someone who knows very little about coding but a moderate amount about the other bit) there's a bit of a tradeoff here. Using full pictures makes it much, much simpler to set up the scenes in the game. You basically just make it cycle through a gallery alongside the script. The downsides are that this method makes the games file size bigger, and you need someone with at least a basic knowledge of image editing programs to put the pictures together (which I assume is still a task nomo is handling). On the other hand having a bunch of modular images that are overlaid means you can keep your filesize down and means that new scenes can be made without any input from the artist once you have enough assets built up. The problem is that (depending on how many elements are in a scene) you're now juggling a lot more things. This is probably a non-issue for an actual programmer, but for an amature who only knows enough to get renpy working it can be pretty fiddly and time consuming, which is why single images are what most games vn style games use.

They have two problems: they have no real coder to implement this quickly and they've been creating content for 5 years before introducing the system. The lack of a coder is painfully obvious because they've been struggling with these modular scenes for over a year now and they haven't properly used stuff like the inventory system or clothing system since the start.

The system itself is quite simple: you add a couple of variables that store which outfit she's wearing and the state of the outfit (which clothing parts are removed). Then while writing a scene you just change one of the variables and (automatically) update the portrait/CG. However, you need a coder to write the code to handle the images.

 

[CourierNPC]

They have two problems: they have no real coder to implement this quickly and they've been creating content for 5 years before introducing the system. The lack of a coder is painfully obvious because they've been struggling with these modular scenes for over a year now and they haven't properly used stuff like the inventory system or clothing system since the start.

The system itself is quite simple: you add a couple of variables that store which outfit she's wearing and the state of the outfit (which clothing parts are removed). Then while writing a scene you just change one of the variables and (automatically) update the portrait/CG. However, you need a coder to write the code to handle the images.

The thing is:

They still don't want to open up to most of us here due to the severe criticism we've given them all these years. Something that aches the heart matters most than considerate thought these days, no matter who got affected the most, I'd say

 

[heehatatt]

From what I see they don't want to open to anyone. Not their patrons, not their discord members, at least based on what I've seen in this thread. We can probably assume that the issue lies with the coder. There's no way in hell it takes as long as its taking to write the scenes(even accounting for the "variations," as the writing in 13.1-2's scenes was pretty similar regardless of dom/sub.) Also the finished cg for 13.3 was posted in full on the patreon so we can't blame Nomo either.