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

[mostwanted8]

Of course she's provoking Nika in her bedroom, that's what playing the serpent is, she's trying to put a spell on him by seduction. But what I say is that she wouldn't actually cheat. In the case that Nika took the bait and tried to flirt with her or kiss her or do something (zero chance of that happening unless he's trying to play her too, but she doesn't know that), she would probably laugh at him considering herself victorious.

Again my intention commenting this particular scene is not defending her or saying that she's acting normal, but to point out that she wouldn't commit an act of what is considered actual cheating, because doing that, specially with someone with Nika's social status, would be out of character for her.

She might easily cheat on Mario in the future when she knows Nika better and he’s gained her respect. Mario might be her bf but she doesn’t care one bit about him, he’s nothing but a toy to her.

You can argue that we've only seen her interactions with Nika and his family, but I highly doubt that her behavior will change even slightly when it comes to someone else.

It’s the opposite really, her behavior changes accordingly with whom she’s talking to. If the situation requires to be socially appropriate or pretend to get ahead she will. That’s how she fooled Bella.

No, I realise this. This is actually what I expect, it's like the entry level of society. Someone who believes in the norms of decency when they meet new people. It's the default setting for 95% of people (in the context of their culture), and Vanessa shows how selfish she is by ignoring such things. I'm not arguing for conformity, but even Nika who is considered rude and antagonistic, knows how to bite his tongue. How you achieve something is as important as why and what

People who don't believe in normal social interactions tend to end up isolated. Try to make up your own language in order to communicate and see how many people understand you; it's the same thing. All interaction is a dialogue, and requires both expression and reception. Dismissing how people percieve/recieve you puts you at a disadvantage. Nika understands this when he's manipulative, and uses people's expectations or thoughts as his guide to be subversive.

It’s not like this though. She doesn’t bother lying to Nika after he’s seen through her. She treats him, Nami and Noji with a bit of disdain cause they’re lower in the social hierarchy, she can afford to. We can assume she’s more gracious when interacting with the rest of high society, putting on a nice front for the sake of appearances, otherwise Bella would mention her as troubling when she and Nika first speak of her. She has no disadvantage compared to Nika who also acts like an outcast, just for revealing her true nature once when she could afford to. She does the same thing with Mario cause she knows she can torture him without consequences.

We can say Bella is a sociopath (poor impulse control, acting in anger, showing open disdain for social norms even more than Venessa) while Vanessa is a psychopath (cold, more calculating, lies easily). They both have antisocial personality disorder, which is not the same as asocial btw.

 

[burbero]

I wish we'd stayed with Zara and Venessa instead of moving out.

As for Venessa, she's actually similar to Nika in many ways. They're both very smart and good at using people. When Venessa realised that Nika was the hunter, not the prey, the two lions actually faced each other.
So will the two lions be enemies or allies? We shall see...

 

[burbero]

So why don't we ever talk about Robin? Doesn't anyone know he's up to something? She's also our soon-to-be roommate.

 

[PaxHadrian17]

I wish we'd stayed with Zara and Venessa instead of moving out.

As for Venessa, she's actually similar to Nika in many ways. They're both very smart and good at using people. When Venessa realised that Nika was the hunter, not the prey, the two lions actually faced each other.
So will the two lions be enemies or allies? We shall see...

The MC and Nami will be staying at Nick's for a few weeks until the housing is ready.

What we don't know is how Ocean will cover those few weeks in terms of chapters.

I won't regurgitate my prior post on this but will go with a quick summary.

I think we will see a compressed week/series of weeks (not in the next chapter but coming soon), that gives depth to important story lines and skims the 'regular' day-to-day activities of college students - like classes, studying, the Nika/Bella project and BB training.

I think we will see greater depth and full scenes for key story interactions (like the book club event), important LI interactions, the Amber/Nika cabin visit, the BB game against the first team and the raid on Melanie Ceril's sorority house at a competing college (Zara asked this of the MC if she was going to train him as part of making the BB first team).

We've seen one other time skip earlier in CH 1, when we transition from the day of the Vic hospital visit and skip several weeks to arrive at the first day of college where Noji takes Nika and Nami to school.

Cheers!!

 

[BobTheDuck]

Should be

Yeah, about that, is there any estimated release date? I tried to lookup couple last pages for info but you guys are pretty active here.

It should be on steam by the end of the week, if they find nothing to complain about, so fingers crossed

 

[yossa999]

Some games I follow have 50-100 renders per update, while Ocean's recent Ch5 Beta to Ch5 Full update has 1700 new renders.

The hillarious thing is that people showed me such games with a dead pan face as a proof that a good solo dev can create games with excellent graphics and frequent regular updates.

Yeah, sure. I won’t argue about the quality of graphics; the level of 3dcg artists in AVN world has grown greatly over the past few years. Or whether the capabilities of 3d modeling software have improved a lot, I'm not sure. But 150-200 renders every 3 months creates a false sense of a regulary updated game, but in fact, they deliver half or three times less content per year than Ocean does for just one of his games.

I don't know about others, but I usually save such updates for a year or so before playing.

 

[BobTheDuck]

So why don't we ever talk about Robin? Doesn't anyone know he's up to something? She's also our soon-to-be roommate.

Robin is the most wholesome girl after Vic. Only reason for her being in second place is 1. Charlie is a vampire, which should make anyone cautious of her daughter and 2. Vic automatically wins for anyone who can feel sympathy.

More seriously, there is only the one episode where Robin freaks out because people are wondering if she humped Nika. Currently we have very little to go on. If she becomes a roommate, that means she'll be away from the vampire and we'll get to actually know her. I'm guessing that because Nika's set a goal to disrupt Charlie for Noji's sake (or amusement), we'll see a lot more of Robin.

Robin, Maja and Ayua are my favourites, even though I doubt I'll see as much screen time with them as with others. Ayua and Maja are almost certainly not LI's, and Robin was just in a supporting role from the start But maybe Ocean will add Robin, I will hope.

 

[AlexFXR]

I'm not here to complain, genuinely curious: Why do the updates take so long? Is it the writing or the development side that's causing it?

As you can see, Ocean, instead of developing the game, spent 5 months on rework. Therefore, the game is being developed very slowly.

 

[Don Sucio]

The hillarious thing is that people showed me such games with a dead pan face as a proof that a good solo dev can create games with excellent graphics and frequent regular updates.

Yeah, sure. I won’t argue about the quality of graphics; the level of 3dcg artists in AVN world has grown greatly over the past few years. Or whether the capabilities of 3d modeling software have improved a lot, I'm not sure. But 150-200 renders every 3 months creates a false sense of a regulary updated game, but in fact, they deliver half or three times less content per year than Ocean does for just one of his games.

I don't know about others, but I usually save such updates for a year or so before playing.

Yeah, less content doesn't just mean less game time, it means less progress in the story and less rhythm for the player for dive in the story,i can´t see how the players can make theories and be thinking in what can happen next if the update is short and there weren´t many interesting events that make the plot go interesting... So i always will prefer bigs updates in more time of development.

Anyway i think the majority of us can coincide in the exagerate time of development of Ocean, this topic has been discussed so many times here and i don´t want to start another discussion about this, it was just an innocent comment

As you can see, Ocean, instead of developing the game, spent 5 months on rework. Therefore, the game is being developed very slowly.

Well, yeah, but i think the rework was necessary, i mean, if we compare the old version renders and the new... It´s incredible the good work Ocean is doing.

 

[Adhdclassic]

Why is chapter 2 visually different from 1,3and up

 

[Hahn1900]

Why is chapter 2 visually different from 1,3and up

the whole game was reworked, and the rework is not complete in the beta... wait for the full version

 

[burbero]

Robin is the most wholesome girl after Vic. Only reason for her being in second place is 1. Charlie is a vampire, which should make anyone cautious of her daughter and 2. Vic automatically wins for anyone who can feel sympathy.

More seriously, there is only the one episode where Robin freaks out because people are wondering if she humped Nika. Currently we have very little to go on. If she becomes a roommate, that means she'll be away from the vampire and we'll get to actually know her. I'm guessing that because Nika's set a goal to disrupt Charlie for Noji's sake (or amusement), we'll see a lot more of Robin.

Robin, Maja and Ayua are my favourites, even though I doubt I'll see as much screen time with them as with others. Ayua and Maja are almost certainly not LI's, and Robin was just in a supporting role from the start But maybe Ocean will add Robin, I will hope.

I don't think Robin is just a girl playing a supporting role. I think she's the one who spread the toilet rumour and even arranged the tabloid photo.

 

[BobTheDuck]

I don't think Robin is just a girl playing a supporting role. I think she's the one who spread the toilet rumour and even arranged the tabloid photo.

That's not impossible, but the way she freaks out in the locker room over the toilet incident and Sasha has to calm her down makes me think she's innocent. It is most likely Sasha that sent her to check up on Nika, as we see Sasha's friends keeping their eyes on him (the redhead seeing if he's okay when he freaks out, Sasha and her posse walking in on the fight scene, Sasha getting Roobin to call Bella or Marla to free Nika), but this is certainly an interesting angle ...I would like for one other character than Vic to be sort of naive and innocent though.

(Unrelated to Robin) Regarding the tabloid incident, the Holgerson's family ran a paper. I am wondering if Stefan is behind the tabloid paper, seeing his sister Zoey was Katie's GF - he has dinner with one of the ZPR first team's coaches (Coates) and a teacher from ZPR's rival MOR, and it looks like we see Emilio's right hand Desiree in the background of the tabloid incident. So I'm sure there's quite a lot at play around the whole thing.

 

[burbero]

That's not impossible, but the way she freaks out in the locker room over the toilet incident and Sasha has to calm her down makes me think she's innocent. It is most likely Sasha that sent her to check up on Nika, as we see Sasha's friends keeping their eyes on him (the redhead seeing if he's okay when he freaks out, Sasha and her posse walking in on the fight scene, Sasha getting Roobin to call Bella or Marla to free Nika), but this is certainly an interesting angle ...I would like for one other character than Vic to be sort of naive and innocent though.

(Unrelated to Robin) Regarding the tabloid incident, the Holgerson's family ran a paper. I am wondering if Stefan is behind the tabloid paper, seeing his sister Zoey was Katie's GF - he has dinner with one of the ZPR first team's coaches (Coates) and a teacher from ZPR's rival MOR, and it looks like we see Emilio's right hand Desiree in the background of the tabloid incident. So I'm sure there's quite a lot at play around the whole thing.

Whatever Robin's role, we'll definitely spend more time with her when we're flatmates.

 

[Old Man Al]

Whatever Robin's role, we'll definitely spend more time with him when we're flatmates.

*her

 

[burbero]

Will all of Chapter 5 full contain new content other than reworking? If there will be new content, is the amount certain?

 

[BobTheDuck]

Will all of Chapter 5 full contain new content other than reworking? If there will be new content, is the amount certain?

Yes, the reworked scenes are expanded, not just rerendered. And Ocean added a few extra scenes. Until it lands, we're all in the dark as to how much though.

 

[Mortarion]

Will all of Chapter 5 full contain new content other than reworking? If there will be new content, is the amount certain?

A few new scenes in the first reworked chapters, IIRC mostly on the Bella path - not sure about this.

We will see, 'cause we are forced to a fresh restart forSeason 1 because of the massive changes to the script/variables.

 

[Tairnel]

So I've been thinking about the development speed for a while now. Throughout Season 1, Ocean has given various reasons to explain the frequent delays, slow development cycles and why the overall progress of the game has been hindered. A large number come to mind, and they've all mostly been resolved:

Spoiler: not so long list

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

These were some of the main reasons that Season 1 development was as slow as it was (I am not going comment on the impossibly large amount of natural disasters and acts of God that occur to Ocean). Thus, with them out of the picture, Season 2 releases should conceivably be released in much shorter time periods, or have an even larger amount of content.

Thus, I believe that this next S2CH1/ Chapter 6 release should be the turning point in the development of SG; in that it will become obvious whether or not this game is going to be seriously developed and some day in the near-distant future, completed. Seeing how the general argument against the naysayers/ trolls who do claim that it'll never be finished is that there are circumstances because of which SG's development has been greatly, slowed, and that it will pick up soon once XYZ is complete (see above list).

If we do see a change in the release cycles, it will be an immediate proof as to the above and serve to convince those still on the fence regarding Summer's Gone for these reasons. We've all seen the posts, ranging from the innocent and mostly valid "This game has 5 story updates/1 week progress in five years, should I invest in it?" to the not so innocent "30 years for 30 chapters, my grandkids will be able to play this game xd, this is never getting finished" In terms of how this affects Summer's Gone, we would probably see a bump in SG following, which indirectly translates to popularity, patreons, funding, and thus quality.

Whichever way it goes, I think the future of Summer's Gone can be judged from what happens next.

But I admit I could be vastly overestimating the amount of people on this thread to whom these things genuinely matter (and underestimating the number of trolls), as it could be that I'm the only one cares so much about something so small and irrelevant. In which case, sorry you read tens of lines of nonsensical ramblings for no major reason lol.

 

[PaxHadrian17]

So I've been thinking about the development speed for a while now. Throughout Season 1, Ocean has given various reasons to explain the frequent delays, slow development cycles and why the overall progress of the game has been hindered. A large number come to mind, and they've all mostly been resolved:

Spoiler: not so long list

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

These were some of the main reasons that Season 1 development was as slow as it was (I am not going comment on the impossibly large amount of natural disasters and acts of God that occur to Ocean). Thus, with them out of the picture, Season 2 releases should conceivably be released in much shorter time periods, or have an even larger amount of content.

Thus, I believe that this next S2CH1/ Chapter 6 release should be the turning point in the development of SG; in that it will become obvious whether or not this game is going to be seriously developed and some day in the near-distant future, completed. Seeing how the general argument against the naysayers/ trolls who do claim that it'll never be finished is that there are circumstances because of which SG's development has been greatly, slowed, and that it will pick up soon once XYZ is complete (see above list).

If we do see a change in the release cycles, it will be an immediate proof as to the above and serve to convince those still on the fence regarding Summer's Gone for these reasons. We've all seen the posts, ranging from the innocent and mostly valid "This game has 5 story updates/1 week progress in five years, should I invest in it?" to the not so innocent "30 years for 30 chapters, my grandkids will be able to play this game xd, this is never getting finished" In terms of how this affects Summer's Gone, we would probably see a bump in SG following, which indirectly translates to popularity, patreons, funding, and thus quality.

Whichever way it goes, I think the future of Summer's Gone can be judged from what happens next.

But I admit I could be vastly overestimating the amount of people on this thread to whom these things genuinely matter (and underestimating the number of trolls), as it could be that I'm the only one cares so much about something so small and irrelevant. In which case, sorry you read tens of lines of nonsensical ramblings for no major reason lol.

I think one thing that gets missed about Ocean versus a number of other devs I follow is Ocean has (up until Very recently) gone with weekly updates where he is very transparent about what is happening re: his workflow and other things impacting his AVNs.

To your points above, I think many devs don't share as much about the things impacting their dev cycle (or at least it feels that way when Ocean gives us weekly updates and many other devs stick to monthly updates, for example).

Some other considerations include:

For those devs who don't buy music and only use more generically available, royalty-free, music - they will not encounter Ocean's issues with depreciation of the value of music licenses getting stretched over 10 years or some of the companies holding the licenses changing the terms of the agreements forcing Ocean to give up songs he literally built animations around (or setting aside the 'don't use my music with adult content' issue).

For those who are not pushing the graphics envelope so hard, they will not worry about the NV link issue with NVIDIA or pushing for such dramatic improvements in the 'look' of early scenes.

Spoiler: 2 old and new render comparisons

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

The old renders are perfectly legit for 95% of the other AVNs I enjoy as I don't expect HD level renders for those AVNs (and some would Really benefit from the treatment.)

We have, per Ocean's last count, 27 more chapters to go.

While I think Ocean's 'speed of production' will increase, the proof will be where we are at this time in 2025 and 2026, for example.

How much faster will he create with new equipment and no reworks?

If Steam is a Big success, I anticipate we will get more great music because Ocean will be able to afford it.

The search for this music and, where Ocean decides to build animations around specific songs (like the great animation build around Humble Hey's What My Mama Said) will take time but how much?

My point is just that I trust Ocean to tell us this great story his way, making great use of the $ from supporters on Patreon and SS and Hopefully Many new Steam fans.

Season 1 is Steaming towards us and will hopefully make port Very soon (Apologies for that pun but... I had to )

I have already set my sights on Season 2 and am looking forward to our first official Season 2 dev log post Steam submission.

Cheers!!