- Nov 11, 2017
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FYI: At least now, it's not a once-a-year schedule and there is good Dev participation both here and especially their Discord, each of which are each well-attended by fans/patrons.
- Thread starter naughtyroad
- Start date
I'm not really sure where you got that impression, but I am working on it full time (eg 40hrs + a week) on top of a full time dayjob, and I'm pretty sure I told you that during the 9 months you were a ground tier patron. But if I remember correctly, you seemed to want me to spend a lot of time being active on patreon and discord, while I'd rather spend that time working on trying to finish this beast.
The good-bye rant about the curse of 0.5 and the game heading for abandonment was a classy touch btw, real motivational stuff.
Let me just make one thing clear to everyone reading this: I'm making LomL because I want to make a game, this game. Not because I want to rake in cash. I'm super grateful for every bit of love and support that I get, but I'd still be doing this if I had none at all. What I'm not gonna do is take time away from creating this game to entertain on patreon or discord in the hopes of attracting more support.
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I thought a Patreon membership was a way to support the work of a developer, not a way to buy face time or communication?
Admittedly I'm not a Patreon member, so maybe I don't have a clue. I prefer to "buy people a coffee" or something of that kind instead and would never consider signing up to a monthly payment for anything but essential services. Anyway, however I choose to donate I certainly wouldn't expect - or want - a developer to take time out from working on what I support just to play at being my buddy.
Admittedly I'm not a Patreon member, so maybe I don't have a clue. I prefer to "buy people a coffee" or something of that kind instead and would never consider signing up to a monthly payment for anything but essential services. Anyway, however I choose to donate I certainly wouldn't expect - or want - a developer to take time out from working on what I support just to play at being my buddy.
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- May 9, 2018
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Meh, those feeling entitled are going to entitle...
So supporter for a year since ver .1 ,but now we're on ver .5 with a once a "once a year update" schedule but from all accounts started in 2019. 1+1 = 5 Smh... math is hard.
So supporter for a year since ver .1 ,but now we're on ver .5 with a once a "once a year update" schedule but from all accounts started in 2019. 1+1 = 5 Smh... math is hard.
- Jan 9, 2020
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Completely agree, I have in fact bought NR a coffee, and was very pleasantly surprised when he noticed, and dropped me a short note of thanks.
You do you naughtyroad, you have a tonne more people who care about this game becoming what you imagined it to be, than you do people who just either want to shit on it or want a rushed update so they can click through it to just wank off and be done with it.
- Nov 27, 2018
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when i lost my job this year this was the only one of six games that i still pay into keep up the good work
naughtyroad
naughtyroad
Assuming this person was a legit patreon and not a troll, as someone who has supported multiple games that have been abandoned over the years I can understand where that they are coming from. 9 months is a long time and for some people communication is a way to make sure that the dev is actually working on the product they are supporting and to hold devs accountable. They just want to make sure they are not throwing their money away.
Please understand that I am not accusing you specifically of anything but after having supported a bunch of devs that abandoned their games I can see why the 'not doing this to rake in cash' argument might not be a convincing one unless the dev switches to a per release payment schedule or delays pledges especially if the person in question thinks that not enough work is being done.
You have a bunch of people supporting your work and who believe in what you are doing and people for the most part arent idiots so I believe you when you say that you are not doing it for the money but I also think it is understandable where people who think differently are coming from especially given that there is money (no matter how little it is) involved. I wanted to say all this because I disagree with the people here saying that this is entitlement.
All that being said I had originally come to this thread because I played the game for the first time and I really enjoyed it. Good to know that you are making progress and I look forward to seeing more of your work.
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- Mar 26, 2019
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Time for the periodic reminder that providing patronage to a developer means that you're supporting them as an artist and not buying episodes, or anything else, on a set release schedule. You're not buying "Light of My Life Game-Pass"...you're giving them money as a reward for their efforts and nothing else unless they state otherwise.
NaughtyRoad has been very clear about the game's development pacing and what patronage means to him, so it should be no surprise to anyone that he's not going to issue weekly reports or engage in a bunch chitty-chat here or on Discord. Unless NR made performance claims (such as this many episodes with this many hours of playtime and this many renders within this many months) and, to the best of my knowledge he hasn't, we're getting what he promised.
What really drives me nuts about this is that people will give huge amounts of money to businesses for franchise products (e.g. AAA games) that take years to create...but will gripe about flipping someone a buck a month towards a passion-project such a LoML.
Just can't figure that out.
NaughtyRoad has been very clear about the game's development pacing and what patronage means to him, so it should be no surprise to anyone that he's not going to issue weekly reports or engage in a bunch chitty-chat here or on Discord. Unless NR made performance claims (such as this many episodes with this many hours of playtime and this many renders within this many months) and, to the best of my knowledge he hasn't, we're getting what he promised.
What really drives me nuts about this is that people will give huge amounts of money to businesses for franchise products (e.g. AAA games) that take years to create...but will gripe about flipping someone a buck a month towards a passion-project such a LoML.
Just can't figure that out.
Different people, different opinions. I am not talking about NaughtyRoad specifically - like I said in my previous post I just played the game for the first time. You may be pledging as a reward and nothing else. I personally pledge for the development of the product under the assumption that the dev will see it through until the end. I do not personally pledge as a reward for work that they have done unless the project is complete unless they set expectations correctly on their patreon introduction section by saying that updates will be irregular etc so I know what I am getting into when I make the payment.
The fact that we both have different reasons/assumptions for supporting does not make either one of us wrong.
- Dec 19, 2016
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This topic just reminded me that I never gave any appreciation for this nice and unique game i enjoy so far. This aint much but here are a few coffees for ya. Much love
- Mar 26, 2019
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I completely agree with your statement and recognize that people have different expectations and motivations, in this case "patronage" and "incentivization". It isn't a "right/wrong" topic, except to the extent that someone bothers to read a developer's position on something and still complains. This clearly isn't what you're doing, but there's a lot of people that are across various platforms and it's...tedious.
- Nov 27, 2018
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You joined up in November 2019, the month I was let go from my previous dayjob, and from that period on I worked full time during the day plus evenings and weekends on it (effectively double of what I can do now), enabling me make the release of chapter 3 just in time for Christmas. So, in fact not full time, but rather almost double full time.
That period lasted until April 2020, when I started my new dayjob and went to evenings and weekends, which would be the aforementioned dayjob on top of a dayjob. You were around during that time as well, leaving in august 2020.
Just like the "patron for over a year" from your first post that turned out somewhat less, you're not telling the truth here. Please stop it, it's eating up my time because I gotta keep responding to present the actual facts lest someone actually believe what you're saying is true, and it's getting tiresome.
- May 20, 2020
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As much as I enjoy you taking an active part here and interacting regularly with us fans, I agree with your sentiment: don't waste time on this, go finish the update.
- Nov 27, 2018
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i hope that he sees that one word in your statement FANS people who enjoy the game and storyline ( you can't rush a good game )
- Nov 11, 2017
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Per the Moderator message in this thread's OP, there is a low tolerance to trolling attempts here.
Related, arguing revisionist history on the development of this game happens to be off-topic and is considered trolling.
Please avoid the noise, people.
Related, arguing revisionist history on the development of this game happens to be off-topic and is considered trolling.
Please avoid the noise, people.
As time passes, expectations are rising, and really, I get that some people are getting fed up or losing trust. So I'm reposting this patreon/subscribestar post from today here, hopefully that helps to take aways some doubts you're having (I admit in writing it, it took away some of mine as well).
-----
State of chapter 5
Well, even though I've been able to update the progress bar every Wednesday over the past period, it's been a little while since the last write up, so let's do some numbers again.
Keep in mind that the number below are rough, and the conclusions you can make from them come with a wide margin of error.
Let's do the images.
Right now there's 6101 individual .png image files in LomL, and 3800 .webp files. Since I've last converted .png files into .webp releasing chapter 4, that means 2301 images added.
Note: images don't translate one-on-one into renders, as I cut up renders into bits in order to do the little animation stuff. I'm taking a wild and baseless guess the ratio is about 1.5 images for every 1 render.
So what conclusion can we draw from this? Well, at this moment, chapter 5 has 2.4x the average for the previous chapter in images added, and we're not even there yet.
Yay, that means it's 2.4 times better, because everyone knows the quality of a VN is measured by the number of images! Nah, I'm just kidding, it's not. But it's a nice indication of effort; creating up the visuals are the greatest time sink by far for me.
Mind you, that's creating the visual scenes that take up my time, not rendering: rendering time is irrelevant as that happens while I'm working editing, writing and coding.
So that means it's already 2.4 times as long as the previous chapter?
Ah... no. This chapter requires me to create almost all visuals from scratch as we're not spending much time (if any) at our usual haunts. I'm guessing it'll be similar in size to the last installment, but I've not measured it in any way.
Let's do development time!
Let's compare that to development times: the final version of the last chapter came out May 20th, so let's peg it at 5.5 months now? The chapter before that came out just before Christmas, so lets say 5 months development time for chapter 3 to completion?
So from a graphics/images point of view, chapter 5 development isn't lagging/slowing down in comparison to the previous chapters, it's picking up.
But are we there yet?
Now, let's look at overall progression. From the progress bar, we've got 41 portraits filled in, 5 partials, and 6 remaining. Let's count the partials as 50%: that leaves 41+2.5 finished, 6+2.5 remaining, so that's 83% of the way there (rounding down).
That's about as far as I'm willing to go at this point though. Given the numbers above, and the fact that history shows an additional two weeks or so of proofing and QA, I'll let you draw your own conclusions; I'm not willing to commit to any dates until I'm sure this beast has thrown all it had at me.
Why this little breakdown?
Well, I'm not gonna lie. Being a lone dev on a huge project, it can be taxing, especially when people come round yelling at you, and I found myself at the brink of having a tiny emotional breakdown myself. I wanted to have a quick and dirty verification to check if I'm not lagging or faltering, and I'm happy I can conclude that if anything, I'm actually picking up speed.
As always, I'm super grateful for your love and support, and dedicated to get the next installment of LomL in your hands as fast as is humanly possible.
-----
State of chapter 5
Well, even though I've been able to update the progress bar every Wednesday over the past period, it's been a little while since the last write up, so let's do some numbers again.
Keep in mind that the number below are rough, and the conclusions you can make from them come with a wide margin of error.
Let's do the images.
Right now there's 6101 individual .png image files in LomL, and 3800 .webp files. Since I've last converted .png files into .webp releasing chapter 4, that means 2301 images added.
Note: images don't translate one-on-one into renders, as I cut up renders into bits in order to do the little animation stuff. I'm taking a wild and baseless guess the ratio is about 1.5 images for every 1 render.
So what conclusion can we draw from this? Well, at this moment, chapter 5 has 2.4x the average for the previous chapter in images added, and we're not even there yet.
Yay, that means it's 2.4 times better, because everyone knows the quality of a VN is measured by the number of images! Nah, I'm just kidding, it's not. But it's a nice indication of effort; creating up the visuals are the greatest time sink by far for me.
Mind you, that's creating the visual scenes that take up my time, not rendering: rendering time is irrelevant as that happens while I'm working editing, writing and coding.
So that means it's already 2.4 times as long as the previous chapter?
Ah... no. This chapter requires me to create almost all visuals from scratch as we're not spending much time (if any) at our usual haunts. I'm guessing it'll be similar in size to the last installment, but I've not measured it in any way.
Let's do development time!
Let's compare that to development times: the final version of the last chapter came out May 20th, so let's peg it at 5.5 months now? The chapter before that came out just before Christmas, so lets say 5 months development time for chapter 3 to completion?
So from a graphics/images point of view, chapter 5 development isn't lagging/slowing down in comparison to the previous chapters, it's picking up.
But are we there yet?
Now, let's look at overall progression. From the progress bar, we've got 41 portraits filled in, 5 partials, and 6 remaining. Let's count the partials as 50%: that leaves 41+2.5 finished, 6+2.5 remaining, so that's 83% of the way there (rounding down).
That's about as far as I'm willing to go at this point though. Given the numbers above, and the fact that history shows an additional two weeks or so of proofing and QA, I'll let you draw your own conclusions; I'm not willing to commit to any dates until I'm sure this beast has thrown all it had at me.
Why this little breakdown?
Well, I'm not gonna lie. Being a lone dev on a huge project, it can be taxing, especially when people come round yelling at you, and I found myself at the brink of having a tiny emotional breakdown myself. I wanted to have a quick and dirty verification to check if I'm not lagging or faltering, and I'm happy I can conclude that if anything, I'm actually picking up speed.
As always, I'm super grateful for your love and support, and dedicated to get the next installment of LomL in your hands as fast as is humanly possible.
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- Apr 11, 2020
- 87
- 335
You are creating something special and lets be honest - what are a few weeks of wait compared to you keeping your mental health in balance.
Take all the time you need (to relax and recharge your batteries), mate!
naughtyroad Success in any form will invariably draw negative attention. People will be unsatisfied, jealous or whatever. Since this is a second job/hobby for you, my humble suggestion is for you to shrug at the naysayers and keep doing what you want to do. I for one enjoy the fruits of your labor and hope to continue doing so for a long time.