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

[FireSauner0]

Read my post above. Living in that part of the world, those devs make more than enough to relocate and cover expenses.

Oh, I wasn't writing that in contrast to your post. I'm from around ,,that world", I know how much life costs there, and how much of a difference it can make to get money like developers in the west do.

Although, I think living expenses and wages aren't the only thing that matter when comparing. A GPU still costs the same (or even more) around here. Food is 30% cheaper (where I live) compared to more western European countries, but we make less than half of what they do, while "luxuries" cost us the same. All paid development tools also fall into this category (in case personal costs wasn't enough).

But that is an aside, really. My post wasn't about how much that amount of money is really worth to devs A vs devs B. It was to simply illustrate that some devs are professional, while others are not. Even with western standards Hreinn wasn't doing badly in the money department (before they dropped the ball, along with their supporter count). VNs don't take several hundreds of thousands of dollars to make.

Most of my post wasn't about money, but the stress of living in that situation.

 

[Enigmanic]

Oh, I wasn't writing that in contrast to your post. I'm from around ,,that world", I know how much life costs there, and how much of a difference it can make to get money like developers in the west do.

Although, I think living expenses and wages aren't the only thing that matter when comparing. A GPU still costs the same (or even more) around here. Food is 30% cheaper (where I live) compared to more western European countries, but we make less than half of what they do, while "luxuries" cost us the same. All paid development tools also fall into this category (in case personal costs wasn't enough).

But that is an aside, really. My post wasn't about how much that amount of money is really worth to devs A vs devs B. It was to simply illustrate that some devs are professional, while others are not. Even with western standards Hreinn wasn't doing badly in the money department (before they dropped the ball, along with their supporter count). VNs don't take several hundreds of thousands of dollars to make.

Most of my post wasn't about money, but the stress of living in that situation.

Good post. I agree with what you're saying.

What I meant to suggest was that if I lived in Russia or Ukraine and made several times more than my country's average household income to make an indie game, I would be very motivated to work my ass off and keep my supporters well informed so they continue pledging.
On the other hand, if I live in the US trying to make an indie game in my spare time for extra money but the income I get from supporters was nowhere near enough to live off without my regular fulltime job, I would most likely be less motivated and more lax about it.

 

[Mayra]

Not much is what's going on right now: several years ago, Sierra Lee left as the coder/writer of the team. Since her departure, the timeliness of updates and quality of writing and art has slowly slid downwards. Nomo is still the artist, but the team implemented redoable scenes that were supposed to be base assets for more/quicker scenes but have instead become a significant portion of each update's art. The updates are now split up by quest, so where there used to be ~2 updates a year with multiple questlines we now see ~2 quest lines per year. Nomo has recently announced that he was carrying a secret illness that has majorly affected the team's ability to produce, but take that with a grain of salt as the team has always had more and more "mitigating circumstances" around update times the last several years.

Anyone knows if she's working in any other project? I noticed the downgrade of the writing when she left, she must be pretty talented.

 

[Enigmanic]

Anyone knows if she's working in any other project? I noticed the downgrade of the writing when she left, she must be pretty talented.

Sierra Lee keeps busy with her own games and novels. You can follow her through Patreon and Discord.

 

[CourierNPC]

living in western countries with donations constantly pouring into your wallet is more dangerous for people than living in a warzone..?

Three major Hreinn's weaknesses are (can be applied to any game dev you have experience with):
a) Being feature creep that wants to implement things outside the scope of what the whole team is set to do,
b) Lack of motivation and driving force after hitting enough supporters and donation amount or losing a pivotal team member after some disagreements
c) Generally, someone is a lazy person whose aim is unclear and had no idea what to do when the game slumped, stuck, and have no clear way when will it's going to finish -- thus lacking in pre-planning and "questioning your ideas and implementation"

To be fair, whether or not you're living comfortably somewhere, it's always the demons inside you that tried their best to took control for what you stand up for (e.g. getting information out, produced as much update as possible, introducing new stuff while figure out how to best implement it, etc.). If Hreinn members living in three or more countries apart (as in one in Europe, one in the US, and the last member is living in South America or any Asian countries), the stress level can be different -- some can be pretty lax, some demand a lot of attention or wanting to do a faster pace in which these cases for the development team have to adapt with as time goes on with the development cycle

Adaptability is one of the keys

 

[mayaw]

save?

 

[Brother Penetrātus]

save?

Yes.

 

[Negativpro0]

save?

Sorry there are no save files available, you are the first person in 123 pages and 6 years of discussions to ask for save files. Nobody before you asked for save files for this game, you can take a look with the search option of the forum and find out that nobody else ever did. Better luck next time.
Here is a link to the save files plus instructions

You must be registered to see the links

 

[JustForPorn12]

lol, damn. hentai-game dev must be a very dangerous occupation with the way all these different dev's magically get hurt/sick around when it's time for them to deliver on promises

 

[scheriel]

I am still waiting for them to come forward and say, that they are going to halt the patreon payments until they release the next update. Even then it would be waaaaaaay too late already, because they pretty much did nothing for the last 5 months in my opinion.

 

[citrone]

Close to 6 months no update. Is that a new record?

for this game? no
for any non abandoned game? also no.. What A Legend is at 13 months or something

 

[Frogperson]

They started on NN in July 2015 and the last version was out September of 2016. So 14 months.
The first version of KoD was out in May 2017 and we are now in August 2023. That comes to 76 months.
That is well over 5 times as long. What has changed between NN and KoD to cause this? I understand it's a small team and there are issues and all that, but there are children that have been born when this game started that are now in primary school.
I am not sure what the timeframe is for it, but I'd almost say it ought to be labelled on hold.

 

[Jinsoyun]

What has changed between NN and KoD to cause this?

The concept was a bit tricky right from the start. None of the original team knew how to work with renpy and from the first patch there was the sub/dom and the3 captains+solo routes. 6 possible variations for a lot of things. NN gave us a bit of freedom to choose the order of certain things, but the game was still quite linear.
The way Hreinn started it, they needed to put in at least 6 times the work to give us the same amount of content as in NN.

This kind of shift in scales needs expert planning and a team with steady output and Hreinn has neither.

Despite all the negative things i write here, i still don't think that this game is unsalvageable or that everything is over, but once Nomo gets better, they need to get back to their their strengths and do what they are good at.

 

[xhyde]

They started on NN in July 2015 and the last version was out September of 2016. So 14 months.
The first version of KoD was out in May 2017 and we are now in August 2023. That comes to 76 months.
That is well over 5 times as long. What has changed between NN and KoD to cause this? I understand it's a small team and there are issues and all that, but there are children that have been born when this game started that are now in primary school.
I am not sure what the timeframe is for it, but I'd almost say it ought to be labelled on hold.

Initially, it was because they went to Renpy from RPG maker, so took more time programming. There's also sub/dom routes so it did take longer (but since most graphics are just slight variations, I don't personally see why it took much longer but w.e)

But the bigger issue was Patreon votes. whenever there were votes about if they wanted faster updates with less content or slower updates with bigger chunks, Patreons always voted for slower and more content per update.

Now, early on, this wasn't as big of an issue as they were coming from a time when updates every 2 months (with occasional 3 month bursts) happened regularly. However, slowly 3 months turned into 4, then 5, and now as far as 6.

To make matters worse, in the old days with Sierra Lee, there was a ton more communication with fans. now, yeah wait 6 months, and they will only make an update when they feel like it. The recent Nomo sickness? not a fucking word until there were people constantly complaining about it on the discord. Then they have the gal to blame the issues on Nomo's health, like no one else on this team sucking up money was able to just log into Patreon and post an update about the situation, what development is like, etc.

The most insulting thing IMO, is that even with the massively extended development time, updates are pretty much just as small as they've ever been.

Frankly, while writing this out, it definitely seems like everyone other than Nomo is just straight-up dead weight at this point. If they were really doing anything, it would be insanely easy to just make an update post saying "Coding and quest lines are completed for up to this point etc, just waiting on Nomo's art to pop in and release the update. in the meantime we're working on bug fixes, testing, etc).

Fans would have something to look forward too, wouldn't be complaining so much, and know that their monthly Patreon payments are actually being used for something other than Nomo pumping out art, and the others just taking their cheques and enjoying the free cash.

At this point, I really wish Nomo just leaves Hreinn, rejoins Sierra, and they go back to making games together. (assuming there were no like, internal issues that lead to them parting ways)

 

[CrimsonMoonwalker]

I'll just give an example from my side.
Never interested in the development team, did not know about any Sierra Lee , got acquainted with the game when there was an act with the preparation of the arena. Then it was necessary to choose which of the orcs to support, bring them booty, alcohol, a tent and all that.
I really liked the game, tracked every update. And once I saw the news that they were late with the update, but DO NOT WORRY, WE HAVE GRAND PLANS, and they presented a map of the entire territory. That there will be many characters, we will see different races, then even then I thought that they would not master it. I assume that it was then that Sierra Lee left them. They decided to do a project that was too much for them. Attention began to be paid not to the development of the main plot, a bunch of third-party characters began to be added, tons of meaningless text, the scenes became less interesting, with each update the game began not to develop, but to degrade. For me, so far, the plot has ended with the fact that the Orc Chief has disappeared, and now we need to do something about it. And we've been doing this for who knows how many years, without progressing through the story. Just the loss of one person from the development team has caused huge damage to this project, and further actions of the developers are slowly finishing off the remaining potential. It would be better if they just started a new game on an RPG maker, since it is so difficult / long for them to write a game in renpy. I don't know what can save this project, if the fans start making their own version of this game, I'm sure it will turn out even better.

 

[Frogperson]

The concept was a bit tricky right from the start. None of the original team knew how to work with renpy and from the first patch there was the sub/dom and the3 captains+solo routes. 6 possible variations for a lot of things. NN gave us a bit of freedom to choose the order of certain things, but the game was still quite linear.
The way Hreinn started it, they needed to put in at least 6 times the work to give us the same amount of content as in NN.

This kind of shift in scales needs expert planning and a team with steady output and Hreinn has neither.

Despite all the negative things i write here, i still don't think that this game is unsalvageable or that everything is over, but once Nomo gets better, they need to get back to their their strengths and do what they are good at.

Sounds like Star Citizen
On the point of negativity, there is quite a bit around, but I would argue this is because NN was really good. Because KoD already has a bunch of great content in it. If it was all rubbish to begin with, then nobody would care if the game died.

 

[JohnnyCash1979]

can anyone help here,please,i cannot rescue Vehlis, when she is captured by Jasmine,ans when i go to save her,Jasmine is always there,and triggers GAME OVER..

 

[bitchass92]

can anyone help here,please,i cannot rescue Vehlis, when she is captured by Jasmine,ans when i go to save her,Jasmine is always there,and triggers GAME OVER..

Jokes on you bud, game ended 3 years ago.

 

[souldead341]

can anyone help here,please,i cannot rescue Vehlis, when she is captured by Jasmine,ans when i go to save her,Jasmine is always there,and triggers GAME OVER..

Read the walkthrough carefully. You have to do the quest in a limited number of days otherwise you fail.

 

[Webemperor]

At this point, I really wish Nomo just leaves Hreinn, rejoins Sierra, and they go back to making games together. (assuming there were no like, internal issues that lead to them parting ways)

I believe Sierra mentioned in her game's server that she mostly left because she didn't like how rape-y the game got and wanted to remove the sub/non-con aspects and make the game entirely about dom route and a battlesim. Nomo didn't feel the fans of NN would like that direction, so they just broke things off in the end.