VN Ren'Py Pale Carnations [Ch.4 Up.6 Public] [Mutt & Jeff]

[xslayermkdx]

4 Months no update? Any news?

 

[Zephea]

4 Months no update? Any news?

End of June they said a likely August time-frame.
https://f95zone.to/threads/pale-carnations-ch-3-update-1-public-mutt-jeff.50281/post-6073545
Just have to be patient! :>)

 

[TD1900]

4 Months no update? Any news?

I'm presently typing up a new developer diary, so you can (likely) expect someone to pass it along once it goes up on the patreon.

 

[RC-1138 Boss]

We need a Soon™ emoticon in this forum.

 

[Idontplay]

Soon™ is property of CarbonBlue, all rights reserved.

 

[aihikari]

I'm waiting for the love to bloom...

... strictly speaking, out of 5 possible options, only Hana and Veronica route doesn't involve cheating but... fuck it, not like they got enough love anyway.

 

[RC-1138 Boss]

Only Mina's route will involve cheating, unless she kicks Killian's ass before something happens. Rosalind is done with her husband and i don't remember if it was ever said Kathleen was a possible romantic route.

 

[Mark17]

I don't mind romantic route with Felicia.

 

[RC-1138 Boss]

Ops, totally forgot about Felicia.

 

[ename144]

The new dev diary was released today. Rather than keep you in suspense, I'll prove TD right and pass it along.

Dev Diary 21
[NOTE: Lovely pic of Hana on the MC's couch omitted to entice new patrons.]
Hey all, TD here with a long overdue dev diary.
We are currently at 1540 new static images and 80 new animations for the Ch3Up2 build, making some good progress on the central club storyline with a handful of events featuring everyone's favorite goth girl friend. That should hopefully be finished up in the next two or three days and then GIL and I are at a cross roads about how to procede.
We have yet to break ground on the Felicia event and quite frankly, we're getting anxious about the time this update has eaten up. You guys have been very understanding about my personal situation last month, but nevertheless the thought of it rolling over into 5 or even 6 months worries us - both in how we're perceived as developers and its impact on our growth.
So the quandry GIL and I are currently facing is do we wrap up the update with these Hana events or push forward and include the Felicia one as well. Currently, we have enough content to justify an update without Felicia, who will take probably a month plus to make her event as robust as Rosalind's and Veronica's. GIL and I are currently split on this, so please share your thoughts.
As always, thank you for the support. We're really excited to show you the next update.

I can understand the dilemma; regular updates are a good thing, breaking up the flow of the story is a bad thing. It does sound like existing content is enough for a proper update, so I suspect either choice is reasonable. Personally, I'd probably lean towards spending the time to finish Felicia's content and get the update out as originally plotted, but then again no one is going to look at me with those sad, disappointed eyes for the next month.

I guess the real question is how the next update would play out. If you delay Felicia and release here, will her arc AND Week 2 of the Exhibition be too large for a realistically scheduled update (that is, will you face this same dilemma again in ~4 months)? Alternatively, would Felicia's event plus whatever ancillary material is available (or could be reasonably added) be too small to serve as an update on its own (pushing Chapter 3 to a staggering four parts in the process)?

If neither of those options are practical, I'd say stick to your original plan and endure the delay to finish Felicia's event now. If either option does seem practical, however, then it probably makes sense to release this portion as is. So that's my advice. But I'll certainly defer to your judgement, TD, whatever it winds up being.

 

[ename144]

Spoiler: Dev Diary 21

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

Okay, now that the diary has been posted, we can get down to the far more important task of analyzing TD and GIL's progress! In the 23 days since the last Dev Diary, they have added 276 static renders and 24 animations. That's an average of ~12 statics and 1 animation per day over that period. Overall, their average is 81.1 statics and 4.2 animations per week since work on Chapter 3 Update 2 began. For those who prefer the graphical version, here are the charts:

Spoiler: Static Renders Surge, Charts at 11!

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

As you can see, GIL has wasted no time getting back on track. Update 2 already has almost as many static renders as Update 1 did, plus substantially more animations. So TD was correct when he said this is enough content to justify an update.

If we assume the overall average rate of 81 statics and 4 animations/week for the additional month TD thinks Felicia's event would require, that suggests the alternative to releasing the update now would be an update of ~1860 static renders and ~96 animations (though my guess is it would be lighter on the animations). That's a pretty hefty update, though not an outrageously large one.

As I said above, both options seem defensible, so I think it will come down to personal preference (and pacing of the next update).

 

[sunaboz]

Meanwhile Pale Carnations has overtaken City of Broken Dreamers (which is also one of my favourite games here, although lower in hierarchy than PC) and currently occupies the #4 spot for best games (weighted rating, which is the most reliable filter when looking for best).
https://f95zone.to/latest/#/cat=games/page=1/sort=rating

TD1900 GIL3D
As for the dilemma, personally I prefer the earlier release. Unless it will disrupt your creative process somehow (I don't see how, it's just numbers), I see nothing wrong with showing us what you've got now and releasing the rest in the next big update. I assume that the next big update will include a break from Carnation events so Felicia part will be a very nice addition. Hopefully in the next update you won't face the same problem and you won't have to decide whether to release a smaller update earlier or a bigger one later but we will cross that bridge when and if it'll be necessary.

In the end it all depends on how you feel but IMO whether Ch3Up2 will end with Felicia or with Hana won't change much since Ch3 will be wrapped up in update 3 anyway. Also, other games releasing later will help us get by during the PC break (e.g. Being a DIK update should be released in a couple of months at most) so... Last but not least the update even now with 1540 images is HUGE and in 2-3 days it will be even huger so there shouldn't be any concern that anyone might consider it small. Having such big update within 4 months is just insane (in a good way) and that's not even considering what TD had gone through.

 

[Hisakatana]

I can understand the dilemma; regular updates are a good thing, breaking up the flow of the story is a bad thing. It does sound like existing content is enough for a proper update, so I suspect either choice is reasonable. Personally, I'd probably lean towards spending the time to finish Felicia's content and get the update out as originally plotted, but then again no one is going to look at me with those sad, disappointed eyes for the next month.

I guess the real question is how the next update would play out. If you delay Felicia and release here, will her arc AND Week 2 of the Exhibition be too large for a realistically scheduled update (that is, will you face this same dilemma again in ~4 months)? Alternatively, would Felicia's event plus whatever ancillary material is available (or could be reasonably added) be too small to serve as an update on its own (pushing Chapter 3 to a staggering four parts in the process)?

If neither of those options are practical, I'd say stick to your original plan and endure the delay to finish Felicia's event now. If either option does seem practical, however, then it probably makes sense to release this portion as is. So that's my advice. But I'll certainly defer to your judgement, TD, whatever it winds up being.

This is a tricky situation, and we obviously lack insight on the development process to make the best decisions, but my two cents on the situation:

I'd go with releasing the update without Felicia's content, and then follow up with a small update for it. I'm not sure how viable this is with the dev and patreon cycles but as long as it's made clear the Felicia follow up will be a "mini update" I don't see many people being upset. This puts things back on track while also avoiding too long of a delay for this cycle and next cycle.

Optionally, biting the bullet and keeping with the previous plan and releasing when it's entirely done is fine. This would keep the story flow which shouldn't be underestimated. While you obviously want to avoid long gaps in dev cycles there were uncontrollable elements here that most people are understanding towards. As long as people are keeping informed there shouldn't be many who will think this is the new "standard" or the game is heading towards "milking".

The option I am not a fan of is cutting Felicia's part and pushing it into the next update entirely. One, it'd be a bit awkward from a story flow perspective. Two, you're pushing part of the delay into the next cycle, which is always risky. As worrisome as it can be to have a long delay when many players are quick to jump to false conclusions (Is the game abandoned? Is the dev milking?) it may end up even worse if there's back to back cycles which are delayed (I'm just assuming adding Felicia's content to next update will add about a month). Ultimately it wouldn't bother me if this is the path the devs take, but I see it as having the most potential problems.

 

[Construct]

As a consumer and huge Felicia fan I‘d say, add the Felicia event.

From a “business“ point of view you might want to keep it out and release earlier to maintain visibility. But I strongly doubt completing the development with the originally planned content would hurt you much, since the update will be huge and of high quality. It‘s not like you take 6 months of development time for 5 minutes of content.

Personally I prefer waiting a bit longer, because I like big updates and the more of your quality content I get to see in one go, the better.

 

[dolfe67]

As long as people are keeping informed there shouldn't be many who will think this is the new "standard" or the game is heading towards "milking".

You're new here, aren't you ? But this thread is pretty devoid of them

 

[Turret]

Hi Guys!
I fully understand the dilemma you are facing, TD1900 and GIL3D . On one hand you want to package the update as you planned it before, on the other hand a release now would keep your profile up and visible, in addition with keeping a certain rythm of updates. Most of us will abide and accept whatever you choose.

If it is not too disruptive to your work on PC, I lean towards releasing Update "2a" now and the Felicia events as a patch/Update "2b" or together with Update 3 due to Außenwirkung (public image). While most of us here in the thread know about the dark personal things TD had to go through, other persons do not. Holding the update back to put the Felicia events in, could negatively impact the public image of PC.

Keeping to a certain flow of updates (be it monthly or every two months/quartal or whatever time the fanbase gets used to) is important to gain and keep trust, because it shows the reliability of the Devs in question. If an establised update rythm is kept, this does wonders for the public image, esp. if the update has some size (and with 1500+ renders the update in question is very much on the right side of the equation, esp. considering what you have gone through in your personal life).
Known to be reliable is important capital, generating goodwill for unexpected developments when Life throws you some curveballs. One example is Eva Kiss, outside the "eternal complainers", you will never hear rumours or stuff about milking/dragging her feet or overly harsh critic in her game threads. She has shown herself to be reliable with bringing out quality updates, so she has a lot of goodwill built up. By the way, it is not unusual for her to fitting in scenes which could not be included in the first release due to time for the final build of an update.
"Culture Shock" is an example for what happens when you start to slide when it comes to reliability. For a time now, the Devs of CS have been unable to meet their old deadlines for whatever reason, it is already the third update in a row which is seriously over announced and expected release date and the Devs admitted it has hurt their public image as well as patron growth.

As I said above, if the update 2 in it´s current shape is not too disruptive to your dev cycle (and you already showed it has some serious and tasty size), then you should release it now and the Felicia events as a patch or with Update3. It is not only the reliability factor, but staying visible and keeping the player base attached to the game.

 

[RC-1138 Boss]

I am also torn. Part of me would say release with the two complete events for Rosalind and Veronica ( ), but another part would also say to wait until this section of the game (the new event) is all complete before releasing everything.

 

[sunaboz]

Personally I prefer waiting a bit longer, because I like big updates and the more of your quality content I get to see in one go, the better.

The solution is simple - do not download the update until Felicia's event will be added or until the game is completed, the rest of us will enjoy Veronica and Rosalind content ASAP. I'm also a Felicia fan and

You must be registered to see the links

but I still prefer earlier release. I might say otherwise if this update without Felicia would be significantly smaller than usual but this one will have over 1540 static images (most likely over 1600) and an enormous amount of 80+ new animations (which is a record by far) so even when it comes to quantity it will meet highest M&J standards. Previous one had 1718 static images and 51 animations so...

I can bet though that people saying they prefer to wait will be the first ones to download the game when it releases, otherwise they wouldn't be such strong advocates for a delay. The truth is, if they want even more humongous updates they can wait another 4 months or longer but those that prefer the earlier release won't have the luxury of a choice if devs decide to delay. So the choice should be simple.

Anyway, if someone is concerned that newest update might end abruptly (although I haven't seen anyone brought that argument up) I would like to hear their opinions when previous updates where released. Update one before last ended with Victoria calling Edwin with birthday wishes (so it was a birthday teaser) and the last one with Kat informing us what can we expect during next Carnation event plus Hana dropping on us ending it with a cliffhanger basically. The next update without Felicia will also most likely end with Hana scene and a night before Felicia events. Nothing abnormal here.

 

[dolfe67]

I can bet though that people saying they prefer to wait will be the first ones to download the game when it releases, otherwise they wouldn't be such strong advocates for a delay. The truth is, if they want even more humongous updates they can wait another 4 months or longer but those that prefer the earlier release won't have the luxury of a choice if devs decide to delay. So the choice should be simple.

It's not that simple. And what about a monthly release then, with unfinished events, you just have to skip udpates for the full event !

 

[Niv-Mizzet the Firemind]

My 2 cents: if breaking up the update in 2 parts would disrupt the story too much, it'd be better to wait and have the update released as per your original plan.