VN Ren'Py Summer's Gone [S1 Steam + DLC] [Oceanlab]

[Ray_D]

This is Ocean's style, 95% chatter without meaning and only 5% useful information. When Regium made the game, everything was the other way around.

hey man how did that situation develop, from what I understand during the first versions of summe's gone another programmer was developing the game, I'm going to assume that was Regium. what happened to him, he retired or he couldn't complete the game and gave it to Ocean.

 

[PaxHadrian17]

There are diminishing returns.

Ocean quality is already wayyyy over what is needed. Focus on speed would be most welcome instead.

I believe that Ocean is creating Sumers Gone as he envisions it. We know from a few of his comments that some of his vision was not achievable, particularly a few years ago, due to hardware and software constraints (budget as well).

As his capabilities to craft SG grow, coupled with hardware and software improvements through time, he is better able to capture and share this vision with us.

AVNs are a relatively new horizon for artists to use to showcase their visions.

Imagine if GOT was a visual novel and then imagine it as the creation of one man with limited funding. How much of the writer's vision would have to be sacrificed just to get the AVN started?

How much would it evolve (quality, animations, and VA for example) as the writer made a name for himself, including the increased resourcing from early success?

I'm not advocating that Ocean slow development to a crawl to get to some magical 99.99% level of quality, but I do want him to feel the artistic freedom to tell us this story his way.

I recognize, as well, that others feel differently.

I'll support Ocean with whatever choices he makes right now based on what he has delivered so far and his commitment to consistent communication with his supporters.

Cheers!!

 

[Maviarab]

hey man how did that situation develop, from what I understand during the first versions of summe's gone another programmer was developing the game, I'm going to assume that was Regium. what happened to him, he retired or he couldn't complete the game and gave it to Ocean.

Regium was just doing the graphics and coding. The story was Oceans. Not exactly sure what happened from memory, I think life just took over and he didn't have the time/incination anymore.

 

[Ayhsel]

I believe that Ocean is creating Sumers Gone as he envisions it. We know from a few of his comments that some of his vision was not achievable, particularly a few years ago, due to hardware and software constraints (budget as well).

As his capabilities to craft SG grow, coupled with hardware and software improvements through time, he is better able to capture and share this vision with us.

AVNs are a relatively new horizon for artists to use to showcase their visions.

Imagine if GOT was a visual novel and then imagine it as the creation of one man with limited funding. How much of the writer's vision would have to be sacrificed just to get the AVN started?

How much would it evolve (quality, animations, and VA for example) as the writer made a name for himself, including the increased resourcing from early success?

I'm not advocating that Ocean slow development to a crawl to get to some magical 99.99% level of quality, but I do want him to feel the artistic freedom to tell us this story his way.

I recognize, as well, that others feel differently.

I'll support Ocean with whatever choices he makes right now based on what he has delivered so far and his commitment to consistent communication with his supporters.

Cheers!!

I agree with most of what you said.

But, like with everything, there are cost a d benefit analysis.

I want him to do his vision. But he also said at some point he has 5 stories to do. I want them to do those too.

In the end, this is a production exercise. You have input, essentially time and effort. You have a production process, his workflow and his machines. And you have output: writing, scenes, choices, renders.

Say, for example, his vision requires him to put more resources on render quality. In particular time. His budget is 24 hours (cant buy time), less 10 between sleep and eating. So 14. Also, productivity decreases over the day as you get tired, so say effective 10 hours per day. Should he focus on addinf anothe freckle to Nami or should he focus on writing another path?

In the end, you can have a vision but by definition, you can only do what you can do given your resources and production process. Better hardware would improve production process for same inputs, but better hardware is developed over time. So at some point, you need to say "this render is good enougha" and move on.

Optimizarion exercise. Given his budget on resources (all type of resources) and current and expected production process, he maximizes the output.

I am of the view that rhe quality dimension os already way more than is needed. Extra focus should be directed to increasing quantity, while trying not to lower quality too much.

 

[charlesrich]

I did the math...

Female NPCs:

Adrianna, Alyson, Amber, Anna, Ayua, Bella, Celina, Charlie, Cindy, Claire, Desiree, Emilia, Eva, Miss Harrison, Coach Hill, Jenna, Karen, Katie, Kelly, Larissa, Layla, Louise, Madison, Maja, Miss Marla, Mikala, Mila, Molly, Nadia, Nami, Nancy, Nia, Penelope, Robin, Sasha, Silvie, Sonya, Susan Gale, Victoria, Zara, circa 20 other Hotties = 60 babes

Holes:

Mouth, Vagina, Anus = 3 holes per Female NPC (I left out the other 5 holes, 'cause that would be skull-fucking and that's just plain impolite)

Result:

There is a total of at least 180 holes to be penetrated by the MC's penis.

Recommendation:

I expect Ocean to introduce a running counter so we can tick off each and every hole penetrated as the game progresses... and, by God, they better all be raw by the end of the game. We are watching!

The battle royale between Nika and William Zane to be the biggest man-whore in the SG/WIAB-verse is the game we deserve!!! I hope there's no pencil-sharpener effect on Nika's dick, though.

Disclaimer:

I left out Summer ('cause that could turn out to be necrophilia) and Nojiko ('just doesn't seem right and hasn't she suffered enough?) from the Female NPC list.

2nd Disclaimer:

a BIG /S... obviously!

If none of those holes belong to Nojiko, then nothing else matters

 

[dan_roger69]

If none of those holes belong to Nojiko, then nothing else matters

If he gets that many holes (180) he will die of STD's

 

[John972]

I believe that Ocean is creating Sumers Gone as he envisions it. We know from a few of his comments that some of his vision was not achievable, particularly a few years ago, due to hardware and software constraints (budget as well).

As his capabilities to craft SG grow, coupled with hardware and software improvements through time, he is better able to capture and share this vision with us.

AVNs are a relatively new horizon for artists to use to showcase their visions.

Imagine if GOT was a visual novel and then imagine it as the creation of one man with limited funding. How much of the writer's vision would have to be sacrificed just to get the AVN started?

How much would it evolve (quality, animations, and VA for example) as the writer made a name for himself, including the increased resourcing from early success?

I'm not advocating that Ocean slow development to a crawl to get to some magical 99.99% level of quality, but I do want him to feel the artistic freedom to tell us this story his way.

I recognize, as well, that others feel differently.

I'll support Ocean with whatever choices he makes right now based on what he has delivered so far and his commitment to consistent communication with his supporters.

Cheers!!

Agreed. I appreciate SG the way it is (story, story pacing, visuals, audio/soundtrack), and accept that slow progress is the penalty to be paid at this time.

Deciding to develop, create, and tell the stories HIS way was the BEST decision Ocean ever made. Thank goodness he didn't cave to the naysayers or run game development like a popularity contest with constant polls etc. F95 is a graveyard filled with abandoned games by developers who went down that particular path.

I much prefer to be along for the ride with the current AVN as it is, whatever the outcome, than to get a poorer overall quality, rushed but finished AVN (or even something along the lines of the first version of the game up to and including Ch 2).

It's like the punters who argue the audio soundtrack should be dropped from SG so the Season 1 lewds can be retained. Really? Sound is such an integral part of the overall experience... the AVN is much poorer without it.

 

[JJJ84]

I believe that Ocean is creating Sumers Gone as he envisions it. We know from a few of his comments that some of his vision was not achievable, particularly a few years ago, due to hardware and software constraints (budget as well).

As his capabilities to craft SG grow, coupled with hardware and software improvements through time, he is better able to capture and share this vision with us.

AVNs are a relatively new horizon for artists to use to showcase their visions.

Imagine if GOT was a visual novel and then imagine it as the creation of one man with limited funding. How much of the writer's vision would have to be sacrificed just to get the AVN started?

How much would it evolve (quality, animations, and VA for example) as the writer made a name for himself, including the increased resourcing from early success?

I'm not advocating that Ocean slow development to a crawl to get to some magical 99.99% level of quality, but I do want him to feel the artistic freedom to tell us this story his way.

I recognize, as well, that others feel differently.

I'll support Ocean with whatever choices he makes right now based on what he has delivered so far and his commitment to consistent communication with his supporters.

Cheers!!

As Ayhsel has pointed out with the Cost & Benefit analysis, there should be a point where he should be saying "it looks good enough" in terms of visuals, and move onto other aspects of the game that really needs more attention - such as speed and more content (for various LIs of the game).
There's also the fact that the this game (and WIAB, given that's going through rework as well) leaves vast majority of other VNs on this site in dust in terms of visuals.
The game already looks gorgeous; just how much more is he willing to push with the new hardware and visuals when resources spent on that could have been actually spent on something else?

So unless he puts his foot down on visuals at some point, he's gonna be in perpetual cycle of the following (please note, I didn't actually make the following diagram, a mutual of mine did);

Spoiler: Ocean's Cycle

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And while I would like to praise Ocean for being a quality focused, the more the above cycle gets repeated, I'd say his state of being a quality junkie becomes more of a detriment than a boon, or as Ayhsel put it more aptly than me, diminishing returns.

 

[BobTheDuck]

As Ayhsel has pointed out with the Cost & Benefit analysis, there should be a point where he should be saying "it looks good enough" in terms of visuals, and move onto other aspects of the game that really needs more attention - such as speed and more content (for various LIs of the game).
There's also the fact that the this game (and WIAB, given that's going through rework as well) leaves vast majority of other VNs on this site in dust in terms of visuals.
The game already looks gorgeous; just how much more is he willing to push with the new hardware and visuals when resources spent on that could have been actually spent on something else?

So unless he puts his foot down on visuals at some point, he's gonna be in perpetual cycle of the following (please note, I didn't actually make the following diagram, a mutual of mine did);

Spoiler: Ocean's Cycle

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

And while I would like to praise Ocean for being a quality focused, the more the above cycle gets repeated, I'd say his state of being a quality junkie becomes more of a detriment than a boon, or as Ayhsel put it more aptly than me, diminishing returns.

This is why I'm excited for the steam release - very hard to go back and change content on a public release - once people own it, I'm sure Steam have rules to prevent reworking content - or making it difficult to quickly change, otherwise people could change the content after approval which would be a nightmare for their legal duties to buyers.

 

[BobTheDuck]

I really liked this message, there are some things I agree with and some things I don't agree with. However, I only respond for one reason, statistically, at least one of those who read your message will not be alive at the end of SG.


I agree more with Pax's initial position, you cannot project on what you do not have. Today, as things stand, I subscribe to the time he indicates. If things change, it will be at that time that it should be corrected, not today.
Because if we stick to the facts, the year 2022 was much more productive for Ocean than 2023. And that's with what he has on hand today, the improvements he has already purchased.

I should clarify: I'm not suggesting that anyone plan a project on uncertain mythical advances. Work should always be scheduled based on what you have, estimates should be on current practices, but the trend is that computers improve far more rapidly than my finances can keep up. It would be foolish to think Ocean will still be on the same CPU in 10 years. In that time, computing will be vastly different to what it is now. I'm currently writing from a 10 year old laptop (it's become my throw around) that cries looking at what my main work machine can do. My current computer is a beast, and I expect to replace it roughly every three years so I have to plan for that financially, mainly because new software runs terribly on old CPU instructions. Cost of computing power is decreasing as a trend. If people work in any computer field and expect their computer to be cutting edge for more than 6 months, they're fooling themselves.

So being aware of tendencies in the industry is just forward thinking - keeping a finger on the pulse of your own specific industries' developments so that you don't waste money trying to stay on the bleeding edge, but you weigh up the positive and negative trends. As a business, I have to think of fall back positions, or the cost of replacement, and half the time replacement will be something new with better technology

The hope thing is simply that people put greater gravity and import on the negative than the positive, looking for problems so as to avoid disappointment. Without hope that the future can be better, why would I bother getting out of bed? Coffee is good but sleep is better if there's nothing but the status quo to grind through. Life is dynamic.

Hope doesn't mean burying my head in the sand either. My day to day life doesn't succeed or fail based on what chapter of SG I can load up at any point in time, so I prefer to rely on coffee Exactly the same as relying on things you don't have, an apocalyptic need for prophesying Ocean's problems is just as irrelevant. His greatest track record is he is persistent, and that's enough for me today.

On not being around to see how the story ends, well, that's the main existential crisis of life (not to diminish it, because it haunts me to often). I drink coffee to keep the void at bay.

 

[yossa999]

I agree with most of what you said.

But, like with everything, there are cost a d benefit analysis.

I want him to do his vision. But he also said at some point he has 5 stories to do. I want them to do those too.

In the end, this is a production exercise. You have input, essentially time and effort. You have a production process, his workflow and his machines. And you have output: writing, scenes, choices, renders.

Say, for example, his vision requires him to put more resources on render quality. In particular time. His budget is 24 hours (cant buy time), less 10 between sleep and eating. So 14. Also, productivity decreases over the day as you get tired, so say effective 10 hours per day. Should he focus on addinf anothe freckle to Nami or should he focus on writing another path?

In the end, you can have a vision but by definition, you can only do what you can do given your resources and production pricess. Better hardware would improve production pricess for same inputs, but better hardware is developed over time. So at some point, you need to say "this render is good enougha" and move on.

Optimizarion exercise. Given his budget on resources (all type of resources) and current and expected production process, he maximizes the output.

I am of the view that rhe quality dimension os already way more than is needed. Extra focus should be directed to increasing quantity, while trying not to lower quality too much.

Oh bro, costs & benefiets, my ass...

There are enough projects on this site with pretty decent graphics, some sort of plot consistent enough to move you between next porn scenes, and a steady and regular release schedule. Updated every few months, with new blows and whistles, kinks and bitches. Since my posts have already been deleted for mentioning other games, there will be no names; those who have been on f95 for a long time enough know them.

I dunno about you bro, but the reason I'm in the SG thread and not these games is because they're boring as hell. All of them. With no exceptions. With all their kinks and bitches and regular updates. Running any of these games seems like a chore to me. I'm not sure how much their devs should pay me to consider playing their games.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the work they have done. It's just sad that they don't have a creative consultant to help them create a masterpiece.

But you and I both know that, despite all of Ocean's sins of perfectionism and long waiting time we'll be back here for our next fix as soon as the update notification rings. Because he offers a gaming experience that others cannot offer. So, if Nami should have one more freckle to create this experience, the one more freckle is what Nami will get and you would have to wait another month. Despite all the costs and benefits.

Therefore, the only way I see to speed up development is him to find people who can and will work under his creative supervision. Or upgrade the hardware if it can improve performance. Ocean believes the new hardware could help. Personally, I doubt it, because, as you absolutely correctly noted, there are only 24 hours in a day, and the only limited amount of job he can do even with the help of top notch hardware.

But you are talking about a compromise in favor of the plot development at the expense of things the author considers important. Therefore, he should not strive for perfect graphics, narrow the plot, reduce the number of characters, and so on. Eventually the game will lose its unique features this way.

 

[Meushi]

But you are talking about a compromise in favor of the plot development at the expense of things the author considers important. Therefore, he should not strive for perfect graphics, narrow the plot, reduce the number of characters, and so on. Eventually the game will lose its unique features this way.

That's simply not true? Ocean has already made many compromises around things he thought important over the course of the development of this game. Any game dev has to, otherwise they'd never release anything. The question is what & how far to compromise without hurting the game aesthetically or financially.

What he was initially willing to accept he no longer does with better hardware. Hence reworking large portions of the game to meet his new standard for the Steam release.

Will it actually increase sales enough to justify all the time spent on the reworks? We'll never know, but I don't think the long delays & slow development have helped grow Patreon support.

Though you're right in one sense. There's no use going on about how better project management might improve productivity and reduce dev cycles because Ocean isn't going to do that. If he were capable of it he'd be doing so already.

Instead we just have to accept Ocean's games are going to remain slow output, and amuse ourselves elsewhere between releases.

 

[yossa999]

That's simply not true? Ocean has already made many compromises in the course of the development of this game. Any game dev has to, otherwise they'd never release anything. The question is what & how far to compromise without hurting the game aesthetically or financially.

What he was initially willing to accept he no longer does with better hardware. Hence rerendering large portions of the game to meet his new standard.

Will it actually increase sales enough to justify all the time spent on the reworks? We'll never know, but I don't think the long delays & slow development have helped grow Patreon support.

Though you're right in one sense. There's no use going on about how better project management might improve productivity and reduce dev cycles because Ocean isn't going to do that. If he were capable of it he'd be doing so already.

Instead we just have to accept Ocean's games are going to remain slow output, and amuse ourselves elsewhere between releases.

If that weren't the true, you'd already be able to fuck half the girls in the game, something the crowd has been clamoring for since the first releases. If that weren't the case, you'd have six or seven chapters, with the first two being ugly, instead of five, two of which are the old chapters re-rendered from scratch. He wouldn't have remade WiaB if it wasn't true (he probably put it off after SG). We wouldn't have seen character-heavy scenes like the reworked first day of college or the basketball game in Chapter 4.
Of course, he has to make some compromises because he is not an idiot. But what Aysel proposes is a shift in emphasis from creativity to factory assembly. This would probably bring him more money and subscribers, especially if he added more kinks and fetishes, sex scenes and finally allowed them to fuck Nojiko. But I'm not sure it would still be the game I love.

 

[Garvelt]

Ocean's biggest problem is the fact that he is working on two games instead of one. He explained why he is doing it and I totally get it, but it still feels like it's a mistake on his part. Instead of having one happy fanbase he has two unhappy ones.

Also, all the talk about being a perfectionist is way overblown in my opinion. If you take into consideration the quality and combine the number of renders and animations he makes for both games he is actually one of the most prolific ones on this site. It just doesn't feel like it.

 

[Meushi]

If that weren't the true, you'd already be able to fuck half the girls in the game, something the crowd has been clamoring for since the first releases. If that weren't the case, you'd have six or seven chapters, with the first two being ugly, instead of five, two of which are the old chapters re-rendered from scratch. He wouldn't have remade WiaB if it wasn't true (he probably put it off after SG). We wouldn't have seen character-heavy scenes like the reworked first day of college or the basketball game in Chapter 4.
Of course, he has to make some compromises because he is not an idiot. But what Aysel proposes is a shift in emphasis from creativity to factory assembly. This would probably bring him more money and subscribers, especially if he added more kinks and fetishes, sex scenes and finally allowed them to fuck Nojiko. But I'm not sure it would still be the game I love.

None of that has anything to do with the cost management you were debating?

Neither Ayhsel or I said anything about changing the direction of the game to a fuck-fest or kowtowing to player preferences?

It's about tailoring dev effort to develop the same game in a reasonable time frame. Which Ocean has done at times, like reducing the number of characters in a scene because he couldn't render it, or leaving placeholder galleries etc.

Ocean can compromise, he just doesn't unless he has to. Better hardware is spent reworking scenes that already looked good instead of increasing development speed. They look better with more background characters etc., but is it worth the time spent? If you're interested in the game ever progressing to a conclusion, then the answer is no.

 

[BobTheDuck]

None of that has anything to do with the cost management you were debating?

Neither Ayhsel or I said anything about changing the direction of the game to a fuck-fest or cow-towing to player preferences?

It's about tailoring dev effort to develop the same game in a reasonable time frame. Which Ocean has done at times, like reducing the number of characters in a scene because he couldn't render it, or leaving placeholder galleries etc.

Ocean can compromise, he just doesn't unless he has to. Better hardware is spent reworking scenes that already looked good instead of increasing development speed. They look better with more background characters etc., but is it worth the time spent? If you're interested in the game ever progressing to a conclusion, then the answer is no.

Scenes already looking good is a matter of opinion. The values aren't tangible other than what you're personally willing to wait for. I personally feel that the difference between old and new WiaB is more clear, as essentially it was start from scratch. The change between render styles in the pre remake was jarring. In SG the change is jarring, but there is an interim step with his earliest 'better' style (the Relucia scense with Bella). I can tell the difference, but he's not remaking those, so he's got a compromise to perfection there. I wish he wouldn't compromise on Mila and sort out her model definitively, but he's being pragmatic there as well, not redoing everything of her, just the ones that stick out too far. And by the time she's in the lime light, chances are he'll have just let the past variations go to the keeper (ie Ch1 Mila and Ch4-5 Mila feel pretty different still).

He is making decisions that compromise on his aesthetic, and his goals for reworking are based on his personal rationale of what he can convince himself to compromise and what he can't based on his roadmap. Background characters are telling stories in SG, unlike 90% of AVN's - the detail of the backgrounds give a sense of the world and dramas outside of the dialogue. I think that has been one of the main parts of Ocean's rework style - to have easter eggs for the plot scattered throughout, so things don't appear out of nowhere (for example, the mice early on when Nika talks with Nojiko outside, at first I thought it was strange, but in light of CH5 it makes sense).

The rationale and value is always personal, so it's impossible to make an objective decision about being effective. The game is progressing to a conclusion, much slower than we'd like. I think it's worth seeing how the development changes now that both games are moving into new territory, past the rework limits. In WiaB, it might not have caught up, but as a reinvention of the game and plot to better integrate SG's prestory, it's basically a new game. CH6 onwards is full new material. I bet Ocean is excited to get past the exhausting work. He'll most likely find more energy as editing and going over the same material is mentally draining. Creation happens faster than edits.

 

[Sin_Mechero]

I agree with a lot of what you say.
For some people it is perfectionism, for me it is lack of planning, because this is already the third version of the game. If he was a perfectionist, he wouldn't have changed the story three times, because he wouldn't have released it until he had the product he wanted.
He has to find a compromise in my opinion, a development time of 5 or 6 years per game, because technology changes and what was good 6 years ago, is not good now. If you exceed that development time you have 2 options, either you do like DPC and keep moving forward with the story, or you start again to have the current standards (and never finish it), and if he has better hardware, he will also make renders that require more rendering time and in the end it will take the same time.
The other problem is of course that Ocean is making two games of that size at the same time, for that to work you have to double the production, not split it.

 

[yossa999]

None of that has anything to do with the cost management you were debating?

Damn, again a wall of text, so as not to annoy those who are not interested in this debate, I’ll put everything under a spoiler.

Spoiler

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[sorco2003]

The one thing Ayhsel is graciously omited here is the release schedule. This quote impying the dev should deliver updates at reasonable time, otherwise why should the dev need to say at some point "this render is good enougha" and move on? Why not keep playing with this render while it's fun? I guess it's because he need to deliver the updates, right? Right!

You may not know this, but Ocean himself said it a long time ago, when he started his "process" to become more efficient.
It seems to me that you are debating just for the blind need to debate. Starting with reading what you want to read in Ayhsel's post and denying that every productive process (of whatever nature) has to go through the cost-benefit balance.
And even more so when an artistic form becomes commercial (Steam release).
Mixing harem with being efficient is directly ridiculous, and there you dropped the ball.
About the last point, if a background character is important, then that one stays, not the 35 others that make your render only viable with the sum of all your computational power + 3 months solving it. And to this they refer in general, the scene of the cinema in WIAB had to be to full room, it was not possible, plan b, some characters but not all, this affected in something? it does not seem to be, because the same Ocean took that decision, the decision to favor the narrative and the development before a single spectacular scene.
To conclude, none of the opinions will change anything, Ocean will continue to do things as he does, and will mutate as he goes along.
Sometimes to improve times, and sometimes to worsen them (discovering new tools in daz to improve animations when you have blender just around the corner is a concrete example of this, and to make matters worse, his logic was cost-benefit).

 

[Meushi]

Or maybe I really don’t understand what kind of compromise you’re talking about?

This. I'm not sure you understand what cost/benefit/compromise means in the context we've been discussing it.

Spoiler

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