Ren'Py Summertime Saga [v21.0.0 wip.6440] [Kompas Productions]

[j4yj4m]

This whole management thing is easy said, but not as easy done and I'm not sure the tech-stuff/reworks could have been done thaaaat much earlier. The decision to take the game "more seriously" was taken after more than 1,5 years of development, where the question likely was, to either half-ass it quickly and move to the next project (DC indeed considered hiring somebody to start working on that project back then) or to "go big" and make it as good as possible.
The first reworks of Diane and Jenny were pretty unpopular, so it was totally unfeasible to add even more of these right after that and the first time he asked to add a tech update, it actually lost the poll on patreon by quite some margin. It's certainly true that they probably should have added a few more reworks in between then and now, but then again, I doubt that would have made a huge difference.

Ultimately this whole "hire a project manager" simply won't work as good as people imagine, because that's not how DC and Sploosh want to develop the game. If they find something they want to add or change or remove, which they think benefits the game, while they are working on the update, they'll do it. Fullstop. Of course that's going to crash every schedule, every time - which is why there isn't any. Then again, I think this style of development generally greatly benefits the game.

As to why this whole "tech update takes much longer thing" doesn't seem to be a big issue for DC? Likely because we are getting other content (scenes) in the meantime, which would have been released at a laster stage anyway. So it's not like the time is actually wasted, given that "there are too few scenes" has always been the biggest point of criticism whenever he realeased literally any update in these last years.

 

[ImTransAndTiny]

Ultimately this whole "hire a project manager" simply won't work as good as people imagine, because that's not how DC and Sploosh want to develop the game.

Every ship needs to have a captain. When you pay people to work for you, you have to manage them or hire someone to manage them for you. If you don't, and just take a casual approach, then the job may get done, but it will take twice as long and cost twice as much as it should.

We won't know for sure how much work needed to be done until the Tech Update is out but, having seen as much of the code as I have, I can't imagine that this has been a well-managed project.

 

[j4yj4m]

Every ship needs to have a captain. When you pay people to work for you, you have to manage them or hire someone to manage them for you. If you don't, and just take a casual approach, then the job may get done, but it will take twice as long and cost twice as much as it should.

The team consist of DC working (drawing) full time and 3 to 4 other guys working part time. Next to that you have 2 guys freelancing for the animations and few more who temporarily help out posing now for the tech update. Everything is tailored to the amount of art DC can actually produce which simply limits everything else. No manager will change that.

We won't know for sure how much work needed to be done until the Tech Update is out but, having seen as much of the code as I have, I can't imagine that this has been a well-managed project.

I'm not sure you are aware that this whole thing started precisely because DC wanted to teach himself how to code? DC's coding exercise was literally all this game was supposed to be and that's what DC did for the first few updates. At some point one of his friends actually helped with the code until he dropped out eventually. Then DC hired a somewhat professional coder who cleaned up at little and when that guy left, the current coder started to work. That seems to be when they essentially decided that everything had to be redone at some point which is now happening.

Edit: So yes, in that sense it really wasn't a well managed project. Nobody actually planned far ahead until the game became popular enough to sustain itself and went way beyond that. But at that point the question became, how you'll deal with what you did until you actually got these opportunities.

 

[Omnikuken]

....... lotsa stuff

As to why this whole "tech update takes much longer thing" doesn't seem to be a big issue for DC? Likely because we are getting other content (scenes) in the meantime, which would have been released at a laster stage anyway. So it's not like the time is actually wasted, given that "there are too few scenes" has always been the biggest point of criticism whenever he realeased literally any update in these last years.

Dunno about the scenes. DC made them for the sole purpose of giving Patrons stuff to do to pass time while the coding part was made. Not saying it would never happen, but most of these scenes are too random and all over the place to warrant a few updates/remakes to add them.

 

[j4yj4m]

Dunno about the scenes. DC made them for the sole purpose of giving Patrons stuff to do to pass time while the coding part was made. Not saying it would never happen, but most of these scenes are too random and all over the place to warrant an update/remake to add them.

I'd actually disagree here for the most part. Ultimately every fuckable girl is supposed to have a few scenes and most of the scenes in these pre-tech updates either fall into that category, were simply meant to add to characters, which could/would have needed more scenes anyway or were special scenes, which they really wanted to add (like the threesomes, etc.).

Sure, there may be a few "unnecessary" ones in between, but to me these seem few. Maybe the last ones for Josephine and Odette, the one for Ivanka and one of Ivy's?

Edit: And yes, they seem random at times, but how else should they add scenes for let's say Daisy, Liu, Tony/Maria, Josephine, Odette, the mafia girls, etc. when these stories are essentially done and likely will never get a real update again, as you say.

 

[St. Nix]

Oh boy, it's the milking season again.

 

[Omnikuken]

Oh boy, it's the milking season again.

More like week. They milk 1, skip 1 and come back the next

 

[D2K]

i think people see there's a discrepancy between the time spent and the time it takes to refactor the code. it's because although it might not have been optimized and a janky mess behind the hood, the game runs and is very playable. all the dialogue, art, and sound assets are already available, so a lot of the refactoring should be copy+paste. 1.5 years is a lot of time for pre-tech updates, and that's not even counting the real tech update. with the existing code/flow charts to tell you how scenes/minigames should play, i think it's very reasonable to have already rebuilt the game from scratch in a 1.5 year time frame.

 

[Count Morado]

i think people see there's a discrepancy between the time spent and the time it takes to refactor the code. it's because although it might not have been optimized and a janky mess behind the hood, the game runs and is very playable. all the dialogue, art, and sound assets are already available, so a lot of the refactoring should be copy+paste. 1.5 years is a lot of time for pre-tech updates, and that's not even counting the real tech update. with the existing code/flow charts to tell you how scenes/minigames should play, i think it's very reasonable to have already rebuilt the game from scratch in a 1.5 year time frame.

And you got your degree in game development, as well as your certificate in project management, from?

Just a few notes:

1. The current code is a janky mess coded by several different people of varying levels of ability, starting as low as PRINT "HELLO WORLD"; knowledge. So it's not copy/paste - it's a complete review of the code and revamping into a proper singular format for better (and quicker) gameplay - as well as better formatted for future additional content.
2. It will soon be too large for a good portion of mobile users to use and so optimization of the code, as well as the art assets, is necessary to keep the game at a manageable size.
3. Speaking of art assets - all the 20K+ assets are at 4:3 display which are being reworked and reposed for 16:9 for better use in mobile devices.
4. Those 4 (soon to be 5) pre-tech updates of newer content took time away from strictly working solely on the tech update, but the developer would rather have the tech update take a little longer than have a year or more of nothing released for the fans and players of the game.

The tech update isn't just to get it good for this year/next year - it's to make it more accessible for a growing market of mobile devices which are the majority of operating systems accessing the internet.

 

[ImTransAndTiny]

And you got your degree in game development, as well as your certificate in project management, from?

Just a few notes:

1. The current code is a janky mess coded by several different people of varying levels of ability, starting as low as PRINT "HELLO WORLD"; knowledge. So it's not copy/paste - it's a complete review of the code and revamping into a proper singular format for better (and quicker) gameplay - as well as better formatted for future additional content.
2. It will soon be too large for a good portion of mobile users to use and so optimization of the code, as well as the art assets, is necessary to keep the game at a manageable size.
3. Speaking of art assets - all the 20K+ assets are at 4:3 display which are being reworked and reposed for 16:9 for better use in mobile devices.
4. Those 4 (soon to be 5) pre-tech updates of newer content took time away from strictly working solely on the tech update, but the developer would rather have the tech update take a little longer than have a year or more of nothing released for the fans and players of the game.

The tech update isn't just to get it good for this year/next year - it's to make it more accessible for a growing market of mobile devices which are the majority of operating systems accessing the internet.

I have two programming diplomas and I've taken the PMP course. I've also created a mod that makes changes to exactly 25% of script files, and I've read almost every line of code in the game. What D2K said was quite reasonable. I'll go point by point on why what you said isn't.

1 and 2. No, the code is not as bad as people seem to think. As I've said many times, there are two different sets of code in the game: "the old way" and "the new way". The prime example of this is that the game didn't originally use overlays, so there had to be an image for each combination of facial expression, arms, and clothing. These were numbered, rather than given descriptive names. It makes posing a pain in the ass. You have to look through the images and pick out the right image so that you can write something like:

show player 63
player_name "Hi there!"
show player 62

In this example, 63 is a talking image, and 62 is the equivalent when not talking. With the new overlay system, you write out what body, arms, face, dick, etc., overlays you want, and they remain in effect until you specify something else. The game automatically shows the "talk" version of the active face overlay when the character is talking, and reverts to the non-talk version when they aren't. The above becomes something like:

anon b_naked a_shrug f_sexy of_blush od_dick4 "Hi there!"

This approach massively speeds up posing and reduces code size. It also massively reduces the size of images. Instead of hundreds of ~100 KB images of the character with every possible combination of face, arms, clothes, etc., you have a small number of 100 KB body images, and then a few dozen ~10 KB face images, some ~20 KB arm images, etc. You end up with less files, all of which are smaller.

Many of the older characters now have a base image directory and a /layered_image directory. The layered images cover all of the arms, faces, etc., for the character. That is to say, most of the image work has already been done. To get rid of the old images, someone has to go through each code file that uses the old system and convert it to use the new system. I try not to do that in my mod, but when I add significant content, sometimes it's the right choice to speed up posing. If I was going to convert all of that code, I would create a chart that would indicate the overlay equivalent for each of the old-style images so that it would be a quick lookup to make each change. There are only a few hundred script files that need to be converted. It's boring work but, conservatively, it would only take about a man-hour per script. One person could do the work in a few months, or the work could be divided between multiple people.

3. No, absolutely not! Only the backgrounds need to be converted from 4:3 to 16:9. That's 1978 images. Most of those images are day, day_blur, night, and night_blur variants. So, something like 500 images need to be widened, and then you make a copy that applies the blur filter, one that reduces the brightness, and one that reduces the brightness and applies the blur filter. All characters and objects are high resolution images on DC's end that have been downscaled to 1024x768. They need to be re-downscaled to 1920x1080. That's roughly 17,000 images, and you could conservatively convert three or four per minute. A big, boring job, to be sure. Dozens of man hours, so a few months for one person, or divide the work between multiple people.

4. Full agreement.



The ~500 backgrounds that needed to redrawn must have been a big job. I think DC was also updating the look of the characters as well, so that's even more work. Redoing the art must have been a monumental task. From what I've gleaned from this thread, the art has been done for some time. That is to say, DC's part is done. The code work that needs to be done will take hundreds of man-hours, but most of it can be divided between many workers, assuming that a good project manager assigns and reviews the work efficiently. There's still Hofstadter's Law. Everything will take longer than it looks like it should take. You fall behind schedule. If you have a fixed budget, there may be nothing you can do about it. If you have enough revenue to hire more people, or convert your part-time workers to full-time, then you can get back on schedule that way. It certainly looks like there's enough Patreon income to do that.

I'm as tired as anyone of hearing people complain about how long the Tech Update is taking. I'm also tired of people misrepresenting how much work it is. You're both right! It is a massive job, and it shouldn't have taken more than a year.

 

[Count Morado]

Wall.
I'm as tired as anyone of hearing people complain about how long the Tech Update is taking. I'm also tired of people misrepresenting how much work it is. You're both right! It is a massive job, and it shouldn't have taken more than a year.

You wrote a wall. First, I wasn't responding to you - I was responding to the people who are at their peak Dunning Kruger moment. But thanks for sharing your background.

1. I understand about the code - I used to do a bit of C+ work back 20+ years ago. But we don't know what the plan is for the future of the game (though it appears to be "mobile first" in its vision). Maybe the developer doesn't fully know either - so we don't have any idea how much of the old code is being kept and how much it is being scrapped. All the pre-tech updates appear based on the old code while the new code is being written.
   I understand how the image layers work, as well. I have worked on short films (live action and animated) as well as have worked as a graphic designer.
2. Yes, I am aware how layered images save on storage space. It's one reason why this game is still under 1GB for Android users.
3. Yes, the backgrounds are changed from 4:3 to 16:9 and that's pretty much been all DC. And then all the other thousands of layers also get changed to the same aspect ratio while making sure they match the new locations in posing. As you are well aware, each layer is laid out so that it just drops directly on top the background exactly where it needs to be so that there is less tweaking needed in the code for proper placement. That takes time for the posers.
4. Ok.

As for his income and what he pays for with expenses, etc ... that's his business. If he wants to hire 100 people or if he wants to contract out to 2... or none. That's his business. If the patreons don't like it, they can unsubscribe. If patreons want to pressure the developer to hurry up or whatever, they have it in their power. The game is free for everyone to play - as it has been for years - yes, because of patreons. But, if it takes 2 months or 20 years. Who cares? The developer continues to put out at least some content on a semi-regular basis and provides content that his patreons vote for in polls, when offered.

 

[j4yj4m]

The code work that needs to be done will take hundreds of man-hours, but most of it can be divided between many workers, assuming that a good project manager assigns and reviews the work efficiently.

As mentioned above, there's like one guy coding in part time and it'll remain that one guy coding part time, given that it doesn't look like he wants to quit his real job, just to get some more hours for a few months or so until everything goes back to normal.

The solution here is still the same as it was 3 to 4 years ago. If somebody thinks it's too slow, they should just stop giving money and enjoy what they are getting for free. These discussions about adding another artist or a manager or person X have happened countless times and the actual result is pretty much always the same anway. It hasn't happened in these last years and it very likely won't happen in the future, either.

Just by the way, DC talked about drawing a scrollable 360 panorama from the top of the lighthouse yesterday. Just to illustrate that he still doesn't give a damn about not wasting time.

 

[Omnikuken]

Hmmm, big e-peen battle that goes in circles. Just what this place needed

 

[WigglyWorld84]

Hmmm, big e-peen battle that goes in circles. Just what this place needed

Someone needs to solve the world's problems. No better place than an internet forum.

 

[Pajonk]

Is this game finished? Haven't seen any new content in many months now.

 

[srksrk 68]

having seen as much of the code as I have, I can't imagine that this has been a well-managed project.

I've seen a lot of this coding, too. It changed much when Dogeek (former coder) left and was replaced. From a modder's point of view, not to the better... Before, everything wrt/ layered images was coded much more consistently and generically. Now it changed in several places, mixing old and new style even in parts of the game that we would call the newer parts (Diane/Jenny updates and later).

 

[ImTransAndTiny]

As mentioned above, there's like one guy coding in part time and it'll remain that one guy coding part time, given that it doesn't look like he wants to quit his real job, just to get some more hours for a few months or so until everything goes back to normal.

The solution here is still the same as it was 3 to 4 years ago. If somebody thinks it's too slow, they should just stop giving money and enjoy what they are getting for free. These discussions about adding another artist or a manager or person X have happened countless times and the actual result is pretty much always the same anway. It hasn't happened in these last years and it very likely won't happen in the future, either.

No argument. I assume that, if DC cared, he would have done something a long time ago.

 

[swextal]

The answer is no, it won't be soon.

Because we are still some time away from pre-tech update 5, and still months out from the tech update, and even still more months out from the R(h)onda update, and beyond that even more months out from Annie's update... oh and a few more months out from Judith's update. That is why, in my original reply to you, I said to look at #12 - which told you all that.

This isn't a game with a multi milion dollar funding and a ton of artists, programmers and so on. I like the game... But bear in mind there's something called life also. I am a Amiga demo coder and it can be months I am out of productivity. Then it just tend to loosen up and I don't sleep for a week.

Make it good as you have done instead of crapping out shit.

 

[Omnikuken]

Is this game finished? Haven't seen any new content in many months now.

Nope. Last new content was in April, "many months" indeed

 

[CoolHandChewie]

Nope. Last new content was in April, "many months" indeed

8 boring 3 second loops isn't really content.