VN Ren'Py Our Red String [Ch. 13.1 BETA] [Eva Kiss]

[ename144]

I'm one of the few people here who prefers playing as Ian so I am looking for forward to this update. It just feels miserable playing as Lena most of the time now because things just keep getting worse for her and i am not into corruption.

I'm with you on Lena's content frequently being an unfun slog, but I don't see how splitting it off into its own update will ameliorate that in the slightest. Sure, this update won't face that problem, but the next update in 4+ months will have nothing but that. I think I'd rather keep the halves together in a (hopefully) cohesive whole, even if it takes longer. Guess we'll see how it works in practice.

I hope it's just this one time, because it seems even on Patreon people are mostly against it. I'm not sure why Eva believes that this is what people want. I mean sure, there's probably a handful of supporter who love this idea, but it's not benefitting the game, at all. Yes, development has been really slow, but this can't be the solution.

I don't see how this can be a one time occurrence. The whole problem is that Eva is struggling with writer's block. I had hoped the Remaster would alleviate those problems (by pruning problematic paths and streamlining the others), but it seems pretty clear that did not happen. I think Eva has some ideas of where she wants things to end up in the long run, but she doesn't know how to get there; every time she tries a step forward, she's swamped by all the ways that step propels other characters in directions she didn't intend.

That's my guess anyway, and I'm afraid I don't see any sign of that changing. If she really were on cusp of a breakthrough I don't think she'd divide the chapter this way.

 

[dontcarewhateverno]

Ian's part in this new chapter shouldn't be dependent on the choice made in Lena's part in the same chapter. Only Lena's would be dependent on Ian's.

Unpopular take, but I think splitting up the release like this is fine. There's going to be more branches per chapter than what it was earlier, splitting up the chapter into individual character based releases at this point makes sense to me.

I assume if she were to do this, she might design it that way. But it seems like it would limit flexibility from a storytelling standpoint, plus give one MC lopsided power in making game-changing decisions vs the other MC, at least for that chapter. If she does go this route for future chapters, I'd speculate she may alternate the lead MC for each chapter to even that out a bit. Might feel a bit jostling though, as that wasn't the structure in previous chapters, where both characters' decisions often affected each other within the same episode.

 

[BloodyMares]

The one thing that confuses me here is that both Ian's and Lena's parts are often dependent on each other's decisions, depending on your chosen path. Seems like Eva will have to do a little more work this way to bring a playable Ian update to life that either doesn't depend on Lena's choices in this update or auto-generates her choices based on the user's choices from previous chapters. In either scenario, she might have to retcon the code a bit once Lena's half is added, scrapping a bit of work to make an Ian-only update possible. Plus extra testing for each split Ian/Lena release. It's hard to estimate how much extra work that'll be exactly, though.

There wasn't a single rule dictating logic behind POV switches, it's decided by the plotlines featured in each chapter. Only Chapters 2, 3, 4, 7, and 8 have multiple switches. Chapters 1, 5, 6, and 9 have entire Ian's POV followed by Lena's POV until the end of the chapter. You can even count Chapter 2 as a linear Ian-to-Lena switch because the last Ian's POV part had nothing to do with Lena's decisions (aside from a couple of lines here and there referencing how their date went) and is mostly about meeting with Alison and Cherry. As a rule, it's very rare when Ian has to deal with Lena's decisions in the same chapter. Most often Ian starts the actual choices that impact the chapter, and then Lena reacts to them. Ian mostly reacts to Lena's choices that come from previous chapters.

If she has already released Ian's part, it limits her ability to be able to make these changes unless of course she does another remaster or makes these changes in the final release of the chapter. I fear this release structure she has proposed will interfere with her creative process and put further restrictions on her writing and development of the chapters in the future. I hope I am wrong, but I think having the creative freedoms and fluidity to make changes to the writing of the chapter anytime before the chapter release is important for the writer's vision of the project, especially for someone like Eva who many have said use the gardening method in her writing.

I don't really see how releasing Ian's part first is supposed to go in the way of fluidity. We have to remember that Chapters come in stages: Alpha > Beta > Final. There's no point in polishing Ian's part alone to its Final stage, it only has to be playable enough so it doesn't have game-breaking bugs. So, Eva can release Ian's Alpha part, and then immediately continue working on Lena's part, releasing the full Chapter 10 Alpha with both parts present and necessary changes implemented to Ian's part, and then polish the entire chapter in the Beta and Final releases like always. It's just one extra release to compensate for increased development time. You can think of Ian's part as a pre-Alpha teaser of Chapter 10. Back in the day, Eva used to share early pre-Alpha builds of GGGB updates with top-tier patrons.

 

[MaliPizdek]

aaa so this month is Ian's part, nice..., so new Cindy content right? did she say anything about her?

 

[Geralt From Rivia]

Facepalm was just for calling someone a boomer. That was pure, unadulterated cringe. Sorry, man. Wasn't otherwise totally disagreeing with your post, except for the "whiners" and "crying" bit. Technically, I'd put the complaints about delays more in the simple "bitching" category. It's a little lighter on the hostility.

Come on man, didn't mean to offend anyone. People have become overly sensitive these days and get offended by harmless teasers.
I'm much more annoyed that some people started bullying Eva for a long development cycle, accusing her of milking, scamming and laziness. She's really having trouble with a game that's getting huge and complex, but she doesn't deserve that.

 

[TheBigWater]

So, if dev wants to release update in parts, it means that Ian wont see a video send to him by Jeremy where he is f*cking Lena
But if the patreons don't mind waiting more, she should just take time and end Lena part

 

[jojogeo]

So, if dev wants to release update in parts, it means that Ian wont see a video send to him by Jeremy where he is f*cking Lena
But if the patreons don't mind waiting more, she should just take time and end Lena part

It seems patreons don't mind waiting a couple of weeks more for the Lena part. Not a couple of months.

 

[BloodyMares]

she should just take time and end Lena part

And she will. It's just this time she can get feedback and bug reports on Ian's part while simultaneously working on Lena's part. So if it happens again that a certain scene becomes controversial and requires adjustments, she can quickly fix Ian's part and write Lena's part with those narrative adjustments already in mind.

 

[BlandChili]

It seems patreons don't mind waiting a couple of weeks more for the Lena part. Not a couple of months.

The response on her patreon was pretty clear, the limit of "weeks" is something you just made up.

And she will. It's just this time she can get feedback and bug reports on Ian's part while simultaneously working on Lena's part. So if it happens again that a certain scene becomes controversial and requires adjustments, she can quickly fix Ian's part and write Lena's part with those narrative adjustments already in mind.

To be honest this seems somewhat absurd to me. She shouldn't develop her story in fear of offending people with controversy.

 

[dolfe67]

There wasn't a single rule dictating logic behind POV switches, it's decided by the plotlines featured in each chapter. Only Chapters 2, 3, 4, 7, and 8 have multiple switches. Chapters 1, 5, 6, and 9 have entire Ian's POV followed by Lena's POV until the end of the chapter. You can even count Chapter 2 as a linear Ian-to-Lena switch because the last Ian's POV part had nothing to do with Lena's decisions (aside from a couple of lines here and there referencing how their date went) and is mostly about meeting with Alison and Cherry. As a rule, it's very rare when Ian has to deal with Lena's decisions in the same chapter. Most often Ian starts the actual choices that impact the chapter, and then Lena reacts to them. Ian mostly reacts to Lena's choices that come from previous chapters.

This chapter is supposed to be big though, isn't it? Playing several hours with Ian and then with Lena might ruin the flow of the game

 

[vvvhhhhnnn]

It's a complicated and ambitious game with loads of characters and nicely inter-reactive storylines, so of course it's not possible to bang updates out every month. In the long run all this will end up meaning an excellent, rich game, it's just in the short term entitled people moan about it. And in theory she could run a whole studio and speed it up with artists and so on, but she'd still need to have control of the writing (which you can't really force, making people write to very tight deadlines generates bad work) and also expecting someone who's buit this from being a completely solo dev to also be great at recruiting and managing production, which is a completely separate skill, is odd

 

[Doppelgang]

There wasn't a single rule dictating logic behind POV switches, it's decided by the plotlines featured in each chapter. Only Chapters 2, 3, 4, 7, and 8 have multiple switches. Chapters 1, 5, 6, and 9 have entire Ian's POV followed by Lena's POV until the end of the chapter. You can even count Chapter 2 as a linear Ian-to-Lena switch because the last Ian's POV part had nothing to do with Lena's decisions (aside from a couple of lines here and there referencing how their date went) and is mostly about meeting with Alison and Cherry. As a rule, it's very rare when Ian has to deal with Lena's decisions in the same chapter. Most often Ian starts the actual choices that impact the chapter, and then Lena reacts to them. Ian mostly reacts to Lena's choices that come from previous chapters.


I don't really see how releasing Ian's part first is supposed to go in the way of fluidity. We have to remember that Chapters come in stages: Alpha > Beta > Final. There's no point in polishing Ian's part alone to its Final stage, it only has to be playable enough so it doesn't have game-breaking bugs. So, Eva can release Ian's Alpha part, and then immediately continue working on Lena's part, releasing the full Chapter 10 Alpha with both parts present and necessary changes implemented to Ian's part, and then polish the entire chapter in the Beta and Final releases like always. It's just one extra release to compensate for increased development time. You can think of Ian's part as a pre-Alpha teaser of Chapter 10. Back in the day, Eva used to share early pre-Alpha builds of GGGB updates with top-tier patrons.

I checked through your walkthrough earlier today to see how many POV switches there actually are in the other episodes, came back here to comment on it, and realized you had already given a way more thorough account of it than I would have managed.

It's good to see that the structure of chapter 10 isn't different to many others, even two of the bigger ones. Telling all of Ian's part first before switching to Lena's is likely causing some narrative issues she'll have to find a way to solve, but the same could be said of switching several times during the chapter. At this point this might even be the easiest way to do it, especially having in mind that the size of the game and the different paths and variations are in danger of spiraling out of control. Just lay out an uncomplicated structure and stick to it.

One other thing I haven't seen mentioned, is how this might also be something Eva partially wants herself, and not just something she does to satisfy all her followers. She did mention that it's "not the way [she] envisioned it", but her vision probably wasn't for it to pass close to a year without a new chapter either; it just turned out that way because the game is so complex. She's mentioned several times how much she loves finally releasing new chapters, and I wouldn't be surprised if Eva also really feel the need to get some new content out there at this point—even though that ideally, also for her, would've been a full chapter.

 

[Ragnar]

The response on her patreon was pretty clear, the limit of "weeks" is something you just made up.

To be honest this seems somewhat absurd to me. She shouldn't develop her story in fear of offending people with controversy.

You're right of course but some developers are very sensitive to criticism, more when they intend to launch their game on Steam and want to avoid controversy or hot topics.

 

[jojogeo]

The response on her patreon was pretty clear, the limit of "weeks" is something you just made up.

View attachment 1961598

Last post.
And I agree, it seems absurd to work on Lena's part and then adjust it with Ian's part feedbacks.

 

[Vernalcash]

This chapter is supposed to be big though, isn't it? Playing several hours with Ian and then with Lena might ruin the flow of the game

How? Chapter 9 was pretty big and you play as Ian first then switch to Lena and the flow was just fine.

 

[lockerxx]

View attachment 1961510

You must be registered to see the links

Hi guys,

After my week off I've kept working at chapter 10 and I'm almost done with Ian's part. All that's left is to finish a couple scenes and revise everything, adding and correcting when needed. The art's all drawn and I've been editing the colored versions, producing some of the final illustrations.

As I keep trying to push the pace, manage all the aspects of the project and the business and keep the final quality to the standard you're used to, I struggle between taking my time and rushing, and as you know, I always feel like I'm lagging behind. My goal is to provide the best game I can, but also to keep you entertained with content, and I hate feeling I'm taking too long.

Some of you suggested in the past that I could release the chapters in two separate blocks, since Ian and Lena have parallel story lines. It's not the way I envisioned it, but you guys deserve some content and I've decided that's the way I'll do it for Chapter 10. This way you'll be able to play Ian's part of the chapter during August, and I can also share with you the results of all the work that we've been doing during these past weeks.

I'll finish writing everything this week and keep working on finalizing the art, then all that's left would be to playtest and iron out all the bugs. Hopefully you can enjoy all the new scenes and story developments, and Lena's part should be coming shortly after.

Thanks again for your support and I hope you'll enjoy what's coming

-----

this is only for Chapter 10 or is the new format?

 

[BlandChili]

this is only for Chapter 10 or is the new format?

Don't think that's determined. It might depend on the feedback the chapter receives.

 

[Existence X]

Finally new Cindy content hopefully

 

[whizwart]

I tried it. Didn't work. Could you tell what you picked for her dialog, please?

I don't recall specifics, but just be generally disrespctful.

 

[Doppelgang]

I don't recall specifics, but just be generally disrespctful.

I like your dedication to give an answer, even thought the question was asked more than three months ago