Ren'Py Abandoned Lab Rats 2 [v0.51.1] [Vren]

Diconica · Aug 1, 2022

slowpersun said:
I am curious what the betting pool is up to regarding whether the next version of this game will drop in September vs. December...

I wouldn't bet on it. All I can tell you is as a developer no chance in hell I would went to using live2D.
It would have been faster to use a different engine and just use 3D models. Then from that point forward adding new poses would have been easy.
Live2D in the long run will eat up more storage space and memory and take more work to add new content.

lewd_gamer_31415 · Aug 1, 2022

Diconica said:
I wouldn't bet on it. All I can tell you is as a developer no chance in hell I would went to using live2D.
It would have been faster to use a different engine and just use 3D models. Then from that point forward adding new poses would have been easy.
Live2D in the long run will eat up more storage space and memory and take more work to add new content.

3D models basically double the price and probably quarter your audience. RenPy can run on a potato while Unity/Unreal require at least a toaster. So I can see why he made the decision.

bloodbus · Aug 1, 2022

lewd_gamer_31415 said:
3D models basically double the price and probably quarter your audience. RenPy can run on a potato while Unity/Unreal require at least a toaster. So I can see why he made the decision.

Double the price of already paid for Daz assets would be $0 lol. I don't really know if Daz can handle animations or if the bridge to Blender is improved at all

loqex · Aug 2, 2022

lewd_gamer_31415 said:
... RenPy can run on a potato while Unity/Unreal require at least a toaster.

uh hmm...

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lewd_gamer_31415 · Aug 2, 2022

bloodbus said:
Double the price of already paid for Daz assets would be $0 lol. I don't really know if Daz can handle animations or if the bridge to Blender is improved at all

Not at all true. You need a separate license to use most assets in an interactively rendered game, e.g. Unreal or Unity. And they are usually overpriced, like the same cost as the non-interactive version (so 10$ for non-interactive and ANOTHER 10$ for interactive addon). The worst part is they usually have bundles for pretty good value, like 200 undergarments for 20$! These are mostly what Vren uses, I believe. But that does not include the interactive licenses... so you would have to pay the addon for each item which are non-discounted so you would run into the hundreds or more.

Daz does handle animations okay, and the bridge to Unity even works okay. I wrote a proof-of-concept reimplementation of Lab Rats 2 in Unity, at least the clothing and body changes parts), so I did the research here.

Diconica · Aug 2, 2022

lewd_gamer_31415 said:
3D models basically double the price and probably quarter your audience. RenPy can run on a potato while Unity/Unreal require at least a toaster. So I can see why he made the decision.

Before I go to far. I want to make it clear I'm not trying to knock V'ren I don't know all the reasons he chose this method. I can only go by my own experience and skills and knowledge what I would have done.
He deserves a lot of credit for making a choice and sticking with it and not just handing in the towel like a lot of developers.

My reply:
They aren't the only engines out there.
You have engines like Urho3D which will run on a raspberry pi.
Making your own game engine for a visual novel isn't that hard. I've done it.
Given we are talking in comparison to live2d that has no camera movement.
We can replicate that fairly easily with a fixed position camera.
We can use transformations done via shader to handle the character animation. So you don't have to upload the entire models or textures over each frame or update you can update the position data or if you do a bit more work you reduce it down to just update a time value. That's been possible since around the time opengl 3.3 came out 2010.

Continuing to use Daz products is one option and paying the added licensing cost.
It took me a few hours total to create a new female character from scratch.
Granted I had a bit more stringent requirements than most characters are because the geometry needed to be standardized.
That way I could use it to edit proportions with such as you do when you design you character with make human and so on.
That's a few hours add rigging in a few more hours. So lets just call it a total day for a body that can be used to make lots of characters vs how many hours is he having to spent on live2d? However as we mentioned above it would need to be able to display that 3D on and which means it would include more programming time.
However in the long run your ability to expand the art of the project would be greatly increased. Example:adding in new poses would only require updating the skeletal animation information. The mesh itself would remain the same.
That type of stuff might not be a major concern of his though.

lewd_gamer_31415 · Aug 2, 2022

Diconica said:
They aren't the only engines out there.
You have engines like Urho3D which will run on a raspberry pi.
Making your own game engine for a visual novel isn't that hard. I've done it.
Given we are talking in comparison to live2d that has no camera movement.
We can replicate that fairly easily with a fixed position camera.
We can use transformations done via shader to handle the character animation. So you don't have to upload the entire models or textures over each frame or update you can update the position data or if you do a bit more work you reduce it down to just update a time value. That's been possible since around the time opengl 3.3 came out 2010.

Continuing to use Daz products is one option and paying the added licensing cost.
It took me a few hours total to create a new female character from scratch.
Granted I had a bit more stringent requirements than most characters are because the geometry needed to be standardized.
That way I could use it to edit proportions with such as you do when you design you character with make human and so on.
That's a few hours add rigging in a few more hours. So lets just call it a total day for a body that can be used to make lots of characters vs how many hours is he having to spent on live2d? However as we mentioned above it would need to be able to display that 3D on and which means it would include more programming time.
However in the long run your ability to expand the art of the project would be greatly increased. Example:adding in new poses would only require updating the skeletal animation information. The mesh itself would remain the same.
That type of stuff might not be a major concern of his though.

He's learning Python still and you're suggesting he also add in a new engine and maybe a new language to make a new engine from scratch, GPU shaders, optimizing rendering performance, 3D math for camera placement and animation, character rigging, etc.

That sounds like much, much more time than Live2D.

Strec · Aug 2, 2022

lewd_gamer_31415 said:
He's learning Python still and you're suggesting he also add in a new engine and maybe a new language to make a new engine from scratch, GPU shaders, optimizing rendering performance, 3D math for camera placement and animation, character rigging, etc.

That sounds like much, much more time than Live2D.

The Dev of LR2 started in december 2017 and before there were LR1. If really He's learning Python still after such time I agree that starting with a new engine would not be a good idea

bloodbus · Aug 2, 2022

lewd_gamer_31415 said:
Not at all true. You need a separate license to use most assets in an interactively rendered game, e.g. Unreal or Unity. And they are usually overpriced, like the same cost as the non-interactive version (so 10$ for non-interactive and ANOTHER 10$ for interactive addon). The worst part is they usually have bundles for pretty good value, like 200 undergarments for 20$! These are mostly what Vren uses, I believe. But that does not include the interactive licenses... so you would have to pay the addon for each item which are non-discounted so you would run into the hundreds or more.

Daz does handle animations okay, and the bridge to Unity even works okay. I wrote a proof-of-concept reimplementation of Lab Rats 2 in Unity, at least the clothing and body changes parts), so I did the research here.

Humbled lol. I didn't know all of that and I appreciate you explaining it so plainly

Diconica · Aug 2, 2022

lewd_gamer_31415 said:
He's learning Python still and you're suggesting he also add in a new engine and maybe a new language to make a new engine from scratch, GPU shaders, optimizing rendering performance, 3D math for camera placement and animation, character rigging, etc.

That sounds like much, much more time than Live2D.

Actually I listed an engine that would work across platforms.