VN Ren'Py Abandoned Old Friends and Public Transport [v0.0025] [Oppai Auteur]

[Hadgar]

I really liked the beginning. I look forward to soon start of the romance between Miranda and James. I will wait for the continuation!

 

[Oppai Auteur]

Just a quick update folks.

I got an email today saying the new PC is fully built and is out for delivery, they gave a 2 to 3 days estimate on it arriving so I'm looking forward to it getting here. Cant wait to see the render times drop to reasonable level...Knowing my luck, this expensive machine will take a grand total of 10 minutes off

Nah, gotta stay positive lol

Regarding some actual game progress. As I said before, the Day 2 writing is complete with Day 3 about half way done. The third day has more characters than any other so its been a lot fun writing interactions with so many different people, well I say many, its just six across the whole two days. But it is different than just writing the same three characters.

I'll keep you guys posted on the progress as much as I can, but I don't want to say stuff for the sake of it, so I'll try to make them important. If there is anything you want to know just leave a post!

Before I go here's an old render of James, Sarah and new character Katie.

 

[Ignatz]

Keep working on the story map beyond what you have to keep yourself occupied while you wait. It will be a huge benefit going forward.

Or, alternatively, you could, y'know, sleep!

 

[Oppai Auteur]

Keep working on the story map beyond what you have to keep yourself occupied while you wait. It will be a huge benefit going forward.

Or, alternatively, you could, y'know, sleep!

I suppose both are good options

 

[Oppai Auteur]

Hey guys, need some help again

Planning ahead has worked pretty good for me so far in terms of writing, and obviously being willing to invest in better hardware helps too, but something I'm not really prepared for in the future is coding complexity. Honestly this isn't coming into play for another couple of releases, which would translate into a couple of months but, again.

I want to get out in front of this!

Anyone who understands even the basics of coding knows there isn't much to my game, even by Renpy standards, but that will need to change, soon. If you pay attention to the bare bones choices you get so far they aren't effecting much, just giving nods to personality traits or are about James maybe making the first move (i.e giving Miranda his number, but she gets the number regardless).

The thing is I would like these to come into play some more, even only slightly. To give an example, at the end of the first release, Miranda sends a pic to James forgetting she is in her underwear, depending on the choice one of the two makes a joke about it. I want that to turn up in later dialogue, light ribbing done by one to the other, a joke only they will get.

Again just a small example, but you can guess how that will evolve later. Previous choices affecting relationship dialogue, not just what the sex scenes you see are.

So any advice or online stuff I can check, and I ask you don't just say look at the Renpy tutorial!

To someone with zero code knowledge, that isn't as clear as some people think. It gives you basics but in the same way there is more to Daz3d than just its tutorials, that's how I feel about Renpy.

Sometimes over people just explain it better

Thanks again folks

 

[Oppai Auteur]

Quick update!

The new PC has arrived which is great, however that means reinstalling 100GB worth of Daz3d assets, plus my renderotica assests as well and that is going to take a while

If it gets done by today i'll take one of the grainy renders from the previous update and redo it, then i'll put both up here so we can compare

 

[Oppai Auteur]

Hey guys, really sorry this is late, reinstalling everything took a lot longer than expected

So, here we go, compare time!

Both renders are 720p, with hours of difference in the render time

A - The old PC



B - New PC (Btw the lower light is on purpose, it didn't fit the time of day in the story)



Interesting thing to point out, the old machine was using a really dated VGA connection and the new one is on HDMI 1080p display so the old grainy renders now look even worse, like really fucking worse. Not only that, but the old renders that I though looked great, now look fucking terrible as well

I'm wondering if you guys could say just how bad the old renders are looking for you on your displays, because even with the new powerful machine, the 720p renders are still looking bad. That includes the ones I'm letting cook properly, they still look lousy, which is a real kick in the balls because I liked how some of them turned out

My display is a large smart tv, not a standard monitor, dont know if that effects things

One step forward, one step back off a bastard cliff, should have known this shit wouldn't go smooth fucking lol

 

[yoyomistro]

Hey guys, really sorry this is late, reinstalling everything took a lot longer than expected

So, here we go, compare time!

Both renders are 720p, with hours of difference in the render time

A - The old PC

View attachment 95334

B - New PC (Btw the lower light is on purpose, it didn't fit the time of day in the story)

View attachment 95335

Interesting thing to point out, the old machine was using a really dated VGA connection and the new one is on HDMI 1080p display so the old grainy renders now look even worse, like really fucking worse. Not only that, but the old renders that I though looked great, now look fucking terrible as well

I'm wondering if you guys could say just how bad the old renders are looking for you on your displays, because even with the new powerful machine, the 720p renders are still looking bad. That includes the ones I'm letting cook properly, they still look lousy, which is a real kick in the balls because I liked how some of them turned out

My display is a large smart tv, not a standard monitor, dont know if that effects things

One step forward, one step back off a bastard cliff, should have known this shit wouldn't go smooth fucking lol

It looks slightly better. But both still look really grainy on my 1080p 27" monitor. I think most people are on 1080p these days, so yea 720p is gonna look bad no matter what. It does look slightly better but you might want to adjust the lighting as it's a lot darker. Good work man, way to put in the effort to deliver a high quality product. Hope you don't have to struggle too hard figuring things out!

 

[Oppai Auteur]

It looks slightly better. But both still look really grainy on my 1080p 27" monitor. I think most people are on 1080p these days, so yea 720p is gonna look bad no matter what. It does look slightly better but you might want to adjust the lighting as it's a lot darker. Good work man, way to put in the effort to deliver a high quality product. Hope you don't have to struggle too hard figuring things out!

Thanks for info man, until now the idea of the look changing depending on the display never crossed my mind.

I’m going to have to keep tweaking things to try and make the most of the new machine. I’ll probably still be sticking with 720p renders for times sake so I’ll need to accept the results won’t be brilliant.

Hopefully that doesn’t put too many people off in the long run, because seeing the game on a 1080p display of my own now really shows that graininess. Unfortunately the new pc is the best I can afford for a while

Thanks again

 

[Ignatz]

You could try to work the "grainy" look into the flavor of the game. Given that you're unlikely to start rebuilding everything at 1080, maybe just make the game a bit more of an "urban" feel. Grittier, less wholesome, not so pristine.

A case could be made that far too many games are "happily" lit and seem almost antiseptic in their renders. Now, you can do both well (see Depraved Awakening for an example of "grittier" + hi res), but if you think you're going to be "limited" to 720p (which is still good, just not as), then maybe consider making it a design element rather than a burden.

How you pull that off is all on you, of course. I can do it in pencil on drawing paper, but I haven't a clue how you do it in 3DCG.

 

[Oppai Auteur]

You could try to work the "grainy" look into the flavor of the game. Given that you're unlikely to start rebuilding everything at 1080, maybe just make the game a bit more of an "urban" feel. Grittier, less wholesome, not so pristine.

A case could be made that far too many games are "happily" lit and seem almost antiseptic in their renders. Now, you can do both well (see Depraved Awakening for an example of "grittier" + hi res), but if you think you're going to be "limited" to 720p (which is still good, just not as), then maybe consider making it a design element rather than a burden.

How you pull that off is all on you, of course. I can do it in pencil on drawing paper, but I haven't a clue how you do it in 3DCG.

Thanks for the input

Rebuilding everything to 1080p is pretty unlikely at this point, so I need to accept the 720p limits, limits which I can work with as long as I tweak the render quality variable along with the cook time.

And hopefully the people playing can handle the 720p as well

Trying to work the grain into the flavour is a good approach, but like yourself I'm not to sure how to implement it, I'm barely even a fucking amatuer at this lol

We'll see how it goes with the next update, nothing about this is set in stone anyway.

Improving the game's content should involve cleaning up the old, not just adding new updates

 

[Oppai Auteur]

Trying to find the ideal render settings is really slowing this release down, good thing I already said that this version would take longer before I even got the new PC lol

Here's another render, this one is still 720p but with a 2.0 on the render quality setting, max limit of 3500 iterations and couple of hours cook time.



Let me know how it looks on your displays, its looking good on my 1080p one

Thanks again guys

 

[Ignatz]

This looks pretty clean. Much improved over your first sample.

 

[jaydem]

Trying to find the ideal render settings is really slowing this release down, good thing I already said that this version would take longer before I even got the new PC lol

Here's another render, this one is still 720p but with a 2.0 on the render quality setting, max limit of 3500 iterations and couple of hours cook time.

View attachment 96985

Let me know how it looks on your displays, its looking good on my 1080p one

Thanks again guys

Looks good from what I see, this time Brother...................Peace!!

 

[Oppai Auteur]

Tested the settings out on a couple of different scenes, new and old, and got the same quality results

Going by the posts on the thread and on my own display quality these are the best settings to use going forward.

Glad to get this out the way, was worried this would take a lot longer.

Spending all that money on the computer then not knowing how to get the best out of it was amusing, almost seemed like close $1000 was wasted for bit there lol

Going to do nothing but focus on 0.0003 going forward now, will keep you guys updated

As always leave a post if you want to know something

 

[LordofEntropy]

Anyone who understands even the basics of coding knows there isn't much to my game, even by Renpy standards, but that will need to change, soon. If you pay attention to the bare bones choices you get so far they aren't effecting much, just giving nods to personality traits or are about James maybe making the first move (i.e giving Miranda his number, but she gets the number regardless).

The thing is I would like these to come into play some more, even only slightly. To give an example, at the end of the first release, Miranda sends a pic to James forgetting she is in her underwear, depending on the choice one of the two makes a joke about it. I want that to turn up in later dialogue, light ribbing done by one to the other, a joke only they will get.

Again just a small example, but you can guess how that will evolve later. Previous choices affecting relationship dialogue, not just what the sex scenes you see are.

So any advice or online stuff I can check, and I ask you don't just say look at the Renpy tutorial!

I have been programming professionally for about 20 years now, and before that many years as an interest. There really isn't an easy way to say "just do this." I can try to give a bit of an explanation and what you might want to research. What you describe in your example is something called state. So Miranda sent an accidental underwear-less selfie to James and he said "thanks, is it my birthday?" The easiest and most basic way to represent that state is something like a boolean variable which in Ren'Py might be something like:

james_saw_mirandas_kitty_and_joked = True;

Then in your later conversation you would do something like:

if ( True == james_saw_mirandas_kitty_and_joked )
{
// Miranda: "Would you like to see it again, MEOW"
}
else
{
// James: "You nasty ho sending nudes, find Jesus you slut"
}

That is the most basic and easy way to describe and keep state(this is what you're doing when you check to see if someone has seen a particular scene). However, it is very basic, and it gets unwieldy pretty quickly if you have a lot of conditions you're dealing with. This is where more advance state topics come into play. A good topic to research would be "finite state machine." It's the kind of thing that starts keeping many states in order, especially those that are like if x = true, y = false, z = true, then do a. Also look at "bit masks" which are another way of doing a quick check to see if certain values have been applied (properly used, bit masks can show just by checking one variable, oh hey "x happened, y didn't happen, z happened, xx happened, yy did)

Ren'Py uses Python so a great resource is:

You must be registered to see the links

They have tutorials, references, and all sorts of goodies.

Really with programming it basically comes down to doing it and you will start to get it. Do some of the tutorials, build a calculator, build a shopping cart, build whatever tutorial is in front of you. It's not as mystical as it seems to people that haven't done it.

Best of luck and keep at it

 

[Oppai Auteur]

I have been programming professionally for about 20 years now, and before that many years as an interest. There really isn't an easy way to say "just do this." I can try to give a bit of an explanation and what you might want to research. What you describe in your example is something called state. So Miranda sent an accidental underwear-less selfie to James and he said "thanks, is it my birthday?" The easiest and most basic way to represent that state is something like a boolean variable which in Ren'Py might be something like:

james_saw_mirandas_kitty_and_joked = True;

Then in your later conversation you would do something like:

if ( True == james_saw_mirandas_kitty_and_joked )
{
// Miranda: "Would you like to see it again, MEOW"
}
else
{
// James: "You nasty ho sending nudes, find Jesus you slut"
}

That is the most basic and easy way to describe and keep state(this is what you're doing when you check to see if someone has seen a particular scene). However, it is very basic, and it gets unwieldy pretty quickly if you have a lot of conditions you're dealing with. This is where more advance state topics come into play. A good topic to research would be "finite state machine." It's the kind of thing that starts keeping many states in order, especially those that are like if x = true, y = false, z = true, then do a. Also look at "bit masks" which are another way of doing a quick check to see if certain values have been applied (properly used, bit masks can show just by checking one variable, oh hey "x happened, y didn't happen, z happened, xx happened, yy did)

Ren'Py uses Python so a great resource is:

You must be registered to see the links

They have tutorials, references, and all sorts of goodies.

Really with programming it basically comes down to doing it and you will start to get it. Do some of the tutorials, build a calculator, build a shopping cart, build whatever tutorial is in front of you. It's not as mystical as it seems to people that haven't done it.

Best of luck and keep at it

Thanks very much for the lesson!

The explanation you gave is actually very helpful. I can understand how the boolean example can get messy and I wasn't expecting a simple 'just do this' solution, so dont worry about that. I expected I would have to learn something more complicated, it was just in this case I honestly just didn't know where to start, like at all.

I'll be sure to download python and check out the tutorials it gives.

It will be slow progress but I hope I get the hang of it lol

Thanks again!

 

[yoyomistro]

Trying to find the ideal render settings is really slowing this release down, good thing I already said that this version would take longer before I even got the new PC lol

Here's another render, this one is still 720p but with a 2.0 on the render quality setting, max limit of 3500 iterations and couple of hours cook time.

View attachment 96985

Let me know how it looks on your displays, its looking good on my 1080p one

Thanks again guys

Wow, that looks AMAZING. The lighting, the resolution, the texture, everything is PERFECT. Even scaled up to match my monitor resolution it looks good. Whatever you did, keep doing it man, glad your investment worked out.

 

[Oppai Auteur]

Work is progressing at a good pace now, the writing for day 2 and 3 has been finished for a while but I had to go back into day 1 and add an extra couple of scenes. The original ending point was fine for an end of version scene, but it didnt transition cleanly into day 2, so I added some extras to make things run together better

Here's one of the renders from one of the extra scenes. I've been experimenting with natural light with some added spot lights as well and I like the results so far

 

[Oppai Auteur]

Hey guys, I need your help again!

The render times have been reduced thanks to this new pc, however I've run into a problem. It seems Daz3D is refusing to use my new GPU during renders, it just sits at 0% usage. The new CPU is more powerful than my old one which is why the redner times have already reduced but the point of putting this much money into a GPU as well was to use it for iray renders.

Anyone run into this issue themselves, or know someone who has?

Thanks again folks