VN Ren'Py Summer Heat [v0.5.1] [Naughty Fox Games]

[BorgiaBou]

B) Make changes to CH05, moving some scenes to CH06 to release faster.

Metal Panic better now?

 

[Zero-]

It is not a criticism of the Dev, no one here has said that the Devs are slow or that the game is bad because it takes time to update... it is the opinion of continuing to postpone the game update, +2400 renders+ in about 8-9 months is great job, but it's still a long way from being finished, if that's a criticism believe me... you don't want to hear my complaints

 

[Zero-]

By the way, I don't see how to continue waiting a few months after several months is something positive, but hey... maybe it's the alcohol talking

 

[minimeatball]

i used to defend this game in the early stages, since the first couple of chapters didn't have much content and it caught a lot of flak for it, but i thought it had a lot of promise and looked really nice (i mean, who doesn't like bree and sophie). but it's coming up on 8 months without an update, and it's only the 5th update of this game. usually devs go on pretending for a couple of years before they start slowing the updates and milking patreon, but goddamn, they went ahead and did it half a year in. i'm very very curious to see just how many scenes/how much character development we're gonna get in this update. surely it's gonna be a lot and worth all these months (clueless)

in all seriousness, devs need to figure out a much better system. i'd say limit the scope of their updates but the first couple updates took 2-3 months to come out and barely had anything, so i'm not sure how much they CAN limit. taking 2/3rds of a year for one update of your game, while also giving the vaguest development updates, is a big ass problem. well, it would be if people stopped subscribing on patreon, but you know how it is. i like this game so i don't wanna see it go down this route, even though it may already be too late. hopefully after they release the update they show some transparency and say what's going on/what their plan is

 

[Frowster]

Feedback and communication is very good, but straight up changing plans you've set your mind on for so long to cater to the loud minority is not the play. Please, reconsider if it comes to the scenario that option B is taken.

I hope the patrons have learned from their mistakes and won't choose the wrong option B or everyone (they included) will regret it.

I wouldn't worry about that...

Spoiler

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And on it goes. There still isn't one vote for option B.

So at least a few more weeks, possibly over a month of waiting. With the progress bar being more than 90% filled, I want to say we'll get the update in early August at the latest, but my prediction of a late June release didn't age very well so I'll just zip it and see how it goes.

Also:

 

[Zero-]

The vote of the people is very obvious... many will vote thinking "oh great, I will vote for this to last a little longer and surely in 2 weeks we will get 500 new renders, yes sir, I will vote for that option" Meanwhile those of us who know that this is not It works like this:

August? Wow, that is optimism, I would say that if we have a release date for November it will be a miracle, some will call me crazy

 

[SunnySide9408]

The vote of the people is very obvious... many will vote thinking "oh great, I will vote for this to last a little longer and surely in 2 weeks we will get 500 new renders, yes sir, I will vote for that option" Meanwhile those of us who know that this is not It works like this:

August? Wow, that is optimism, I would say that if we have a release date for November it will be a miracle, some will call me crazy

You're Crazy .....

Hum, joke aside, have some faith buddy and let's see how it goes
No one can predict what will happen
So for now we can only hope
Also I agree with the crowd (for once) I'd rather wait a bit longer and have something finished than something rushed and "half baked"

 

[Geralt From Rivia]

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Hello, everyone!

This week we'll focus on the content we have so far, and what still remains to be created. We have passed the point of doubling the content of CH04. In quick numbers, CH05 currently looks like this:

• 2400+ renders (rendered and unrendered).
• 8 lewd animations (unrendered).

The last stretch of work consists of several hundred renders still, mainly remaining scenes of Eve, Bree and Mia.

For a good while now we're been running a big render queue, which has been in the hundreds at times. The animation frames are also all unrendered because we're rendering out the story renders first. There's still a couple of possible animations and some extra angles we'd like to do, but they're in "maybe" territory. We're opting out of cinematic and extra animations until we're able to render 24/7 in the background.

We haven't been fond of making estimations because the render times are a huge impacting factor and there are only so many hours in the day to create new content. Our current render queue for example is "only" about 90 hours if left to render continuously, plus loading times. The animations are far, far in the 100+ hours territory... but we'll look into optimizing that when we reach that point.

At this point it might be obvious what the problem is, and the good news is that we've worked towards fixing it. We are slowly building a 24/7 rendering rig. We've already done a lot of the back-end work to have it functioning with ease when it comes to file sharing, assets and that sort of thing. Our plan has been to get this rig fully functional with the release of CH05.

Choices, choices...

We also had a really long talk about the development time of CH05 and how it took over the content of CH06. We're not really happy about it, and at this point we're not as confident that we made the right call. The longer wait times are coming back around to bite us in the ass... but there's always options to consider.

After thinking it over, we boiled it down to two possible options:

A) Continue creating CH05 as we currently are.

B) Make changes to CH05, moving some scenes to CH06 to release faster.

Option A means the train keeps on chugging, no stops. We finish the evening and night content fully before releasing CH05 exactly as we envisioned it, with no scenes left out. It would still take some time to create, and especially to render. We prefer this option because it's the whole package as we planned it.

Option B means the train switches tracks. We cut the chapter right before the night content starts with the main girls and save those scenes for the next chapter. This obviously means CH05 wouldn't contain all the content we envisioned for it and might end abruptly, but it would enable us to release the chapter much faster.

We'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Regardless, the render queue is popping off and the work continues. On the coding and SFX side of things, work has been a breeze since it's much easier when it doesn't require hundreds of hours of waiting (unless something is seriously wrong). We also edited the script and created more custom morphs for our clothing so the fabric moves more naturally.

Next week we're looking forward to focus on some intimate scenes, and more scripting.

Other news

We published June's special render of Mia earlier today. It's a little camping trip with some strip poker. In case you didn't have a chance to see it yet,

You must be registered to see the links

Cheers,

Robison & Npx

Northpx

My personal opinion is going with Option A. Do your game as planned, follow your vision. I've seen a lot of unfinished updates that have been stripped down for the sake of speed, they always seem incomplete and ragged. Usually after this I look at the screen and think: "What the hell was that?"
But you guys definitely need another power rig, it looks like you may end up in a situation where you have completed the development, prepared / posed all the renders and animations, written the code, but ... you still have a large queue of animations and have to wait until they complete.
The main thing here is to strike a balance between schedule updates and the amount of content. Resist the temptation to make the game even bigger, because then the development speed will be delayed and you will not get improvements, and some players will lose interest. According to my personal observations, some players begin to rebel after 9 months of waiting.

 

[Joshy92]

I would also go with option A
but that is just my opinion.

Also does anyone else think.
The updates are going to get a lot more complicated when they start branching paths for different characters
future updates could even take longer than this one.
Not that that matters to me the game is worth the wait imo
It is a cut above the usual stuff on here
you guys wouldn't believe some of the terrible games I have played on here lol

 

[Jericho85]

ding to my personal observations, some players begin to rebel after 9 months of waiting

Fuck em.

Option A is the obvious choice and the impatient fuckers can whine all they want. The update is ready when it's ready and I'm happy to wait. I follow a lot of these VNs and almost all of the best quality ones are on a 6+ update cycle. A few even longer. This degree of polish in digital art takes time and there's plenty of other shit to do in the meantime.

Besides... according to my personal observations, the people who to tend to get angry and start posting "milker" theories after long update cycles tend to also be the people who never donate a cent to any of these devs on Patreon.

 

[Zero-]

Relax, rejicho
it's a discussion, that's what the page is for, it's not for you to start insulting and crying at random people, nobody will take you seriously that way.

Well, if you don't mind the wait...why can't you wait a few more months to see those final scenes in ch 6?ah,yeah...you don't like to wait that long?well,it's the same case with me(and of many) right now, isn't it funny?

See, at least we already agree on something. And this is not a criticism of the game... it is an opinion that something is not going well and perhaps it can be improved, we put some humor in it "because as the saying goes," better to laugh than to cry" If it happens I don't know the same with other games, but that doesn't change that the discussion was opened here and people are free to give their opinion

 

[Geralt From Rivia]

Fuck em.

The impatient fuckers can whine all they want. The update is ready when it's ready and I'm happy to wait. I follow a lot of these VNs and almost almost all of the best quality ones are on a 6+ update cycle. A few even longer. This degree of polish in digital art takes time and there's plenty of other shit to do in the meantime.

Besides... according to my personal observations, the people who to tend to get angry and start posting "milker" theories after long update cycles tend to also be the people who never donate a cent to any of these devs on Patreon.

Jericho! Haven't seen you for a long time.
You're right for the most part: the new development time standard for major league VNs is 6+ months now.
As the performance of new GPUs grows, there is a huge opportunity for developers to make games bigger, with much better visuals, cinematic animations and high resolution. Top AVNs are not inferior in quality to AAA games, but in many ways surpass them.

People will ask: if the new hardware is so powerful, then why did we get updates every month 5 years ago, and now we wait so long? Maybe the developers are milking?

The answer is no. Back then we had updates of 500 renders that opened in a small window. Now it's 2500-5000 renders with animated scenes! Requests for top games are very high and developers create real interactive books with a well-developed story and characters, deep immersion in the world. Previously, 5 years ago, it was just jerk off simulators that received an update once a month.
AVN as a genre has made a huge qualitative leap.
I think these users who scream about milking simply do not understand the situation on the market for these games and want it to be like before. Well, they can just go to Pornhub, there are plenty of updates every day.
And one of these users who is grazing here is just a troll who does the same thing in all threads.

UPD:
The one problem in things you said:
Summer Heat is not yet a top VN with a captivating story, this game attracts mostly with beautiful girls. The dev started to increase the development cycle and make big updates too early. It's more important to get a large audience interested first, and only then expand the game, otherwise people can really lose interest, because the game, although good, is not a blockbuster like Artemis, BaDIK, Summers Gone, ORS and other top games.

 

[Zero-]

I hope I'm not that "troll" just because some of you don't like to hear the truth

 

[Geralt From Rivia]

I hope I'm not that "troll" just because some of you don't like to hear the truth

No, you're not a troll.
There is no truth here, but rather your vision: your priority is updating as soon as possible. I see your position and you are entitled to it.
My priority is a quality update that looks complete.

 

[Abhai]

BOOOBS
ASSES
MIA
PUS...
damn, the wrong keyboard

Here is the right one (not for mods/uploaders obviously)
Guys do you know some renpy (or similar) games from 2013?
Im not aware of any, so lets take some 2016-2017 game as an example shall we.
What do you think of its quality, renders/art wise?
Imo, thats some pretty low bar, even if the story is great and captivating, it hardly can compete with even lowest tier new games...

Personally I dont care if game update takes 1 month or 12 months.
I dont care if there is a reasonable hope the game (I love&play) could be finished one day.
There are few examples of such games. One thing those have in common is they dont have too many episodes/chapters (usually 7-8 top).

How much chapters/episodes are planned here?
Anyone knows that? devs?
If we are close to mid game now, yay, Im excited and I certainly do have high hopes for this!
If we are at the beginning (10-15-20% into the planned content), well, you can choose to live with rainbows and unicorns, fairytales no one can take from you, no matter how hard he might try

Spoiler: short elaboration

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[CHAD-MAN]

Northpx

My personal opinion is going with Option A. Do your game as planned, follow your vision. I've seen a lot of unfinished updates that have been stripped down for the sake of speed, they always seem incomplete and ragged. Usually after this I look at the screen and think: "What the hell was that?"
But you guys definitely need another power rig, it looks like you may end up in a situation where you have completed the development, prepared / posed all the renders and animations, written the code, but ... you still have a large queue of animations and have to wait until they complete.
The main thing here is to strike a balance between schedule updates and the amount of content. Resist the temptation to make the game even bigger, because then the development speed will be delayed and you will not get improvements, and some players will lose interest. According to my personal observations, some players begin to rebel after 9 months of waiting.

PTSD from the lastest Radiant "beta" update that is going to take the full 14 months to get a full release. There's no way around bad dev pratices and I rather them doing what they've planned and stick with it, improving on the next dev cycle rather than fix mistakes and say its the patrons fault. That said, they do need to plan how to improve speed because I'm not sure a 8 month window per update for 1hour tops is acceptable, especially in this phase.

 

[Jericho85]

UPD:
The one problem in things you said:
Summer Heat is not yet a top VN with a captivating story, this game attracts mostly with beautiful girls. The dev started to increase the development cycle and make big updates too early. It's more important to get a large audience interested first, and only then expand the game, otherwise people can really lose interest, because the game, although good, is not a blockbuster like Artemis, BaDIK, Summers Gone, ORS and other top games.

It's always a little different from one dev to another. Different hardware, different experience levels, knowledge, skillsets, aptitudes, etc... And I can be pretty fucking critical when it comes to VNs that I think have shit writing (you know I've had words about SG ). But one thing I'll never do is criticize how long it takes for the Dev to release his or her work. I want to see good art and good writing, and both can take a while to get it right. Sometimes delays for revisions are necessary. So it's important to me that the Dev takes all the time they need and not rush things just because of pressure from some impatient vocal minority.

 

[Geralt From Rivia]

PTSD from the lastest Radiant "beta" update that is going to take the full 14 months to get a full release. There's no way around bad dev pratices and I rather them doing what they've planned and stick with it, improving on the next dev cycle rather than fix mistakes and say its the patrons fault. That said, they do need to plan how to improve speed because I'm not sure a 8 month window per update for 1hour tops is acceptable, especially in this phase.

I think that if a dev says "This is all the fault of the patrons" then this is a red flag and such dev should be unsubscribed as soon as possible. "Bad fans", we already heard that.

It's always a little different from one dev to another. Different hardware, different experience levels, knowledge, skillsets, aptitudes, etc... And I can be pretty fucking critical when it comes to VNs that I think have shit writing (you know I've had words about SG ). But one thing I'll never do is criticize how long it takes for the Dev to release his or her work. I want to see good art and good writing, and both can take a while to get it right. Sometimes delays for revisions are necessary. So it's important to me that the Dev takes all the time they need and not rush things just because of pressure from some impatient vocal minority.

In addition, many of these people are amateur loners and often make mistakes/burn out/experience writer's block ect...
But I'm talking about general trends in the AVN genre in total.
As for SG, I will probably write to you a little later in DM, I also have a lot of criticism on this game and would like to hear your opinion. Will not arrange an off-topic here.

 

[Buck80]

So this is a yearly update sort of thing? Not bein a dick but... been 8 months so is it like every 12 months an update?

 

[fhiaofwiao]

You must be registered to see the links

Hello, everyone!

This week we'll focus on the content we have so far, and what still remains to be created. We have passed the point of doubling the content of CH04. In quick numbers, CH05 currently looks like this:

• 2400+ renders (rendered and unrendered).
• 8 lewd animations (unrendered).

The last stretch of work consists of several hundred renders still, mainly remaining scenes of Eve, Bree and Mia.

For a good while now we're been running a big render queue, which has been in the hundreds at times. The animation frames are also all unrendered because we're rendering out the story renders first. There's still a couple of possible animations and some extra angles we'd like to do, but they're in "maybe" territory. We're opting out of cinematic and extra animations until we're able to render 24/7 in the background.

We haven't been fond of making estimations because the render times are a huge impacting factor and there are only so many hours in the day to create new content. Our current render queue for example is "only" about 90 hours if left to render continuously, plus loading times. The animations are far, far in the 100+ hours territory... but we'll look into optimizing that when we reach that point.

At this point it might be obvious what the problem is, and the good news is that we've worked towards fixing it. We are slowly building a 24/7 rendering rig. We've already done a lot of the back-end work to have it functioning with ease when it comes to file sharing, assets and that sort of thing. Our plan has been to get this rig fully functional with the release of CH05.

Choices, choices...

We also had a really long talk about the development time of CH05 and how it took over the content of CH06. We're not really happy about it, and at this point we're not as confident that we made the right call. The longer wait times are coming back around to bite us in the ass... but there's always options to consider.

After thinking it over, we boiled it down to two possible options:

A) Continue creating CH05 as we currently are.

B) Make changes to CH05, moving some scenes to CH06 to release faster.

Option A means the train keeps on chugging, no stops. We finish the evening and night content fully before releasing CH05 exactly as we envisioned it, with no scenes left out. It would still take some time to create, and especially to render. We prefer this option because it's the whole package as we planned it.

Option B means the train switches tracks. We cut the chapter right before the night content starts with the main girls and save those scenes for the next chapter. This obviously means CH05 wouldn't contain all the content we envisioned for it and might end abruptly, but it would enable us to release the chapter much faster.

We'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Regardless, the render queue is popping off and the work continues. On the coding and SFX side of things, work has been a breeze since it's much easier when it doesn't require hundreds of hours of waiting (unless something is seriously wrong). We also edited the script and created more custom morphs for our clothing so the fabric moves more naturally.

Next week we're looking forward to focus on some intimate scenes, and more scripting.

Other news

We published June's special render of Mia earlier today. It's a little camping trip with some strip poker. In case you didn't have a chance to see it yet,

You must be registered to see the links

Cheers,

Robison & Npx

Option A. We've waited for so long now that the update being ready one month sooner or later doesnt really matter anymore. Finish the update the way you envisioned it. Changing the direction now will just create more chaos. Maybe the way ch. 5 was developed is not the way to go in the future but you can change that from ch. 6 onwards.