VN Ren'Py Over the Moon [v4.2.3] [Lockheart]

[RuthBlackett]

Here's the thing: your daughter hates your guts, and you need to spend a week with her.
How will things go?​

HATE FUCK!!!​

 

[RiamMar]

I am lost to what URM progress bar is or how it measures things.
But I can say with certainty this was not even as much as the previous update let alone all the rest combined.
I'm really at a loss as how you could even come up with a statement like that.
This release the game is 730mb while the previous was 670mb... So with 60mb your saying the game being 9% larger is gonna offer more than what we had? These are uncompressed versions as well.

I will stand corrected if this is chapter 4 Part 1 and the next release will be Part 2. I assumed it would be Chapter 5 as I don't remember Lockheart has split chapters before and I have not been following any of their blogs, dev updates.

This is a half-chapter. Yes, the next update will be Chapter 4, Part 2 (probably around v4.3.x or v4.4.x, depending on new features).

For some stats (intro/import and chapter outros not counted):

• Chapter 1: 300 renders and animations in 10 scenes
• Chapter 2: 249 renders and animations in 7 scenes
• Chapter 3: 240 renders and animations in 7 scenes
• Chapter 4p1: 177 renders and animations in 4 scenes

Chapter 4p1 is shorter than any previous full chapter, but more than half of any previous half of a chapter.
I (as in me and only me, not Lockheart) expect the second half to be about the same size. After that chapter 4 part 2 release we will get to work on chapter 5, the big finale. I cannot say yet, if that will be a 2-parter as well.

- Edit insert -
URM might go with how much of code/label content was viewed.
For that we have about 60KB in Ren'Py scenes (without image, animations, screens, transforms etc.) in chapter 4p1 and 70KB in chapter 3. I don't have an exact dialogue/word count for each chapter, since I'm an idiot and don't have the stats for chapter 3 anymore.
There is one larger branch with both branches having the same size (3KB) for the Pridwyn/Titania choice at the end of Bliss. And, depending on ones Jenny choice in chapter 3, you might "skip" two scenes with about 17KB. The branching and the two scenes are separete "labels", which might let URM have about the same label count as chapter 2 and 3, since branching in previous chapters held them within the existing labels and at maximum set a variable/flag.
So, for both these things URM might "let you see" more available content in this half-chapter, due to code style changes and branching, even though there's only "slightly" more than half a usual update.
- Edit end -

It is true, that we didn't want to postpone the release any further, that's why we cut the chapter in half, to release it without delay.

Our goal is to finish OtM early in 2025 with a final code revision after that. That revision being that I only took over OtM not long before chapter 3 released, so there's going to be some cleaning up in the code of the previous chapters etc. that I don't want to do right now, so we don't screw with save game compatibility while were still in development. Better to have one clean cut which might potentially give "rollback issues" after the finale update. That way, new playthroughs and new players get my reworked code and established playthroughs will still work fine, when using the v5.x release, I'll post here, as I did with chapter 3 and 4p1.

I'm not as involved in writing and rendering as I am with other games, so some answers to content questions are me talking about the game with a fair bit knowledge of the behind the scenes but might still be not 100%.
When it comes to dates, they might always change and as seen with this update we might even move the goal post and only release part of a chapter, if we want the content we created to be already in the hands of our players.

Anyway, when it comes to the feature I mentioned at the beginning. We got some feedback on the "change viewing angle" for the cockpit scene. It seems that some player have a dislike for that option to even be there. Be it with dialogue, as in our release, or without (some games just let you click through the viewing angles without any dialogue, thoughts, expression or descriptions etc. So the "feature" for next time that's already in the working is to make that view angle feature optional. That way, players that don't like it get a curated dialogue with the scene changing if and as we think it might be nice to view and other players can have their buttons to change the viewing angle themselves as shown in the cockpit scene. As mentioned with the save game compatibility above. This option might only take effect in future scenes that will have that feature (not sure if all or only some). It will be available for all affected scenes in the final code revision though.

Hope this clears up most of the "what's this release" questions. If not, let me know.

Edit: I'm also on antibiotics since this morning, so I hope what I wrote can somewhat be understood. :rofl: