I love the DarkCookie defenders being like "its really hard to make a game, it's hard to do code"
Not in Renpy. NOT in Renpy. Especially with the content in front of us. There is nothing complicated in this game. It's a point and click game with a few minor timing puzzles. DC is not writing code from scratch. He is not pioneering new game mechanics. There aren't complex dialouge trees. There aren't complex stat progressions. There's no combat to balance. There isn't even a basic crafting system. There aren't complex branching storylines. The games industry was making games more complex than this in the 1980s, around 40 years ago. Renpy itself is a tool suite specifically created to streamline visual novel games exactly like Summertime Saga. The most complex work he has to do is sorting out his triggers for events. if X stat >3, then event = true. That sorta shit. In two years, Dark Cookie could have got an associates degree in actual programming.
I picked up Game Maker and in an afternoon I was making stuff more complicated than this game. Not because I'm good at programming, but because a visual novel with light timing puzzles is not complicated. I don't care what he claimed, there's nothing crazy under the hood of this game that takes 2 years to clean up. With a little effort, this simple little game could have been recoded from the ground up in a month by a halfway competent Renpy author, especially for $30k/month. Give them a script and some assets and it should just be fucking done already.
I'm glad DC is gonna suffer for this. Dude is a scammer and a fraud.
