It'd be cool if the thread got locked down and tagged as abandoned. Because the game is dead, and its corpse is being puppeted around. It's stupid. Anyone who says stripping out 90% of the content to "remake" it over the course of 5-8 years isn't actionable is full of shit. This site isn't the biggest thing, but it outright stating "nah, this game is abandoned" even if it doesn't meet the most stick-up-the-ass technical definition of it would impact a lot of people. They'd consider the game dead. Is that fair? Who fucking cares, man. Hypothetically let's say it has this massive impact, and it dries up funding for this game, and it dies. Good. This whole thing is embarrassing.
Porn games get more leeway for their unprofessional, stupid dev behavior than the biggest, most predatory AAA game publisher. You don't have to be a programmer or software engineer to know that there's no reason this kind of game takes this long. Even starting from scratch shouldnt' take this long. There's barely any player reactivity or branching paths, which are the biggest consideration when it comes to visual novels. There's a couple inventory management events, and a few timed minigames, that's it. Especially since this is in Ren'Py. It was made with the express purpose of streamlining making this kind of game. The way people talk ~the code~, you'd think it was a complex physics engine or intricate hero shooter with multiple systems all working off each other in a delicate ballet. It's Ren'Py text and images. The most complex stuff is making sure a few events dont' trigger out of order, and that's a basic flowchart. This is not Baldur's Gate 3, it's Summertime Saga. I've seen what goes into a Ren'Py game. Their complexity has never justified almost a decades worth of development time.
This is taking longer than Red Dead Redemption 2. It's on track to being worse than Duke Nukem Forever. Fuck it, bring it out back and put a bullet in it. Maybe Dark Cookie will get the message and finally shit or get off the pot.
