This entire game seems to be a very special case in this site, right? I am not sure that I understand it... This Ferdaf or something guy made a game in another engine, then Night Mirror got his permission to port the game to Renpy. Then Ferdaf slowed down the production and Night Mirror started adding his own content to the game? Because he talks like he added things and cut stuff and so. So in a way, Night Mirror made the game his own?
Then he also has a life so he has to quit but he doesn't want to let the game unfinished because he feels responsible (I guess?) so he makes an ending for the game, completely ignoring whatever plans or ideas Ferdaf may have had for it?
It sounds very weird, can someone explain to me? This is a very interesting situation, I want to learn from it.
It's not really that complicated. Ferdafs put together the original game, in the Unity game engine. The interface to play that game isn't the best, and it has several bugs and issues (and a single save slot, and buggy saves, and annoying wandering bits, and no family wording, and incomplete replays, and... You get the idea)
Hanging out in the Unity thread (Link in my signature), I saw many players lamented the poor unity implementation, myself included. Unity can be a great engine, but the game design was pushing players away from what was (imo) a great game, just a (big) hassle to play.
So, I thought hey, I should try porting over my favorite scenes into renpy, so I could "enjoy" them easier. I never intended to do the whole game, nor to share it. But I found I enjoyed the porting process, so I kept going.
It wasnt one to one. I fixed things along the way, from mistakes in art, to typos, to plot holes. I added extra stuff i wanted (I was making it for me). And I improved systems to make it easier to use (mostly to see if I could).
Again, I was just doing it because it was fun and figured one day it wouldn't be and I'd abandon it like every other game I've ever tried to make. But that didn't happen.
Until one day, I'd remade the whole thing, and figured, fuck it why not share it, I doubt anyone is going to care, or that f95 will even accept it. But it was accepted and people liked it, so I kept doing it.
I never asked for permission, nor did Ferdafs ask me to make the port. In truth, we've never talked about it. I've tried to make it as clear as possible that Ferdafs made the original, and this is a mod/remake of it in a different engine, with some changes and upgrades. Others have done it for other games, I'm not the first, I won't be the last.
For a while things went fine. Ferdafs would put out a new update and I'd port that content into the renpy game. That was the goal, make the art and story more accessible to players (in terms of gameplay).
Both versions of the game are on this site, so if people are getting it here, they aren't paying. In fact I actively encourage people to support Ferdafs, since, as is obvious now, without him, the game won't go on.
When people offered me money, I asked they sent it to Ferdafs instead. My hope was that this game would help boost sub numbers for him. Let this project advertise his work to players turned off by the original.
Then, in 2023 the updates from Ferdafs stopped. Not just game updates, but pateron posts. No reason why, no info given. He just went radio silent. After 6 months (the longest gap in updates) I had to decide what to do.
Do I abandon the game and hope he one day returns? Or give it an ending, so that it won't linger in limbo forever.
The community for this game has been great, so, instead of leaving the game to rot, I tried to give it a wrap up (how well that went is up for debate, but it's the best I could manage, making a game was never what I intended here and the ending really stretched what I could do).
So what if Ferdafs does return? Awesome! The game is made to accept new scenes, I can just work them into past days and players get more content!
What if Ferdafs suddenly gives us a whole different ending?! Very unlikely, considering how many plots are incomplete, but, sure no problem that's just a branch point and becomes ending #3.
And what if Ferdafs never returns? Well, I put an ending on it, so at least this game won't be totally incomplete.
The thing so many people get hung up on is not understanding why I'm not continuing on my own, why not devote myself to making new content for this project forever?!?! And the answer isn't that complicated. I'm making a port of the original game. If there is no more original game, there is nothing to port, there is nothing for me to do. This project was never meant to be standalone.
Players want me to be a full time dev, a full time artist, a full time writer. And I'm not. I'm just a coder using some else's assets to make a very big mod.
