Ren'Py Abandoned The DeLuca Family [Season 1] [HopesGaming]

[Cartageno]

a small text adventure game from the 80's and 90's(ie. something not worth hanging on to if it's significantly slowing development).

Objection your honor. Text adventure games of the 80s and 90s may be a bit clunky by now, but some of them were way more creative than today's storylines (Infocom vs Bethesda story writing is a no contest) - just not as shiny. And yes, Hopes will never emulate Infocom, and I can see how it may hurt this game, but I had to say it that this genre deserves way more respect.

 

[Moosica]

Too bad there was no language translation done for this update.
In the options my language is still proposed but when I launch the game it is in English.
Another good game that will certainly end up in the trash without translation from my mother tongue.
Well, I'm not sure I want to redo everything by translating the sentences.
Right now I'm too disgusted to play it!

 

[Cartageno]

Too bad there was no language translation done for this update.
In the options my language is still proposed but when I launch the game it is in English.
Another good game that will certainly end up in the trash without translation from my mother tongue.
Well, I'm not sure I want to redo everything by translating the sentences.
Right now I'm too disgusted to play it!

Translations were done by volunteers, not by the dev. And I consider it doubtful that it will be make or break for this game.

 

[Moosica]

Translations were done by volunteers, not by the dev. And I consider it doubtful that it will be make or break for this game.

I never said that the translations were done by the developer.

 

[JJJ84]

Too bad there was no language translation done for this update.
In the options my language is still proposed but when I launch the game it is in English.
Another good game that will certainly end up in the trash without translation from my mother tongue.
Well, I'm not sure I want to redo everything by translating the sentences.
Right now I'm too disgusted to play it!

Given English is my second language as well, I can in a way understand the frustration of not understanding (was a bit of struggle learning it when I was a kid).

But having said that, I'd say that anyone with decent level of English would have no trouble understanding this game's default English text.
So if your English isn't too bad, why don't you just give it a go?

It's either that or getting better at English if you want to avoid putting games in "trash"; and if it's the latter, the struggle will really be worth it and will open doors for you to enjoy whole lot of things, not just limited to what's in your mother tongue.

 

[JJJ84]

The simple & obvious answer is to remove Exploring Lucania, as that's what introduced the game breaking crap.
Just turn that into the 3 scenes with each new person's introduction. Remove the contract mechanic from it, entirely.

The bugs issue is more complex than that though.

v0.07 not only introduced those 5 Wilfred's contracts, but also the Ombra gameplay contract with the main story "What is truly weak is truly strong."
Sure, it wasn't as much as the Exploring Lucania gameplay release but v0.07 was when bug reports started coming in due to gameplay.

And this continued with v0.08 when Hopes released the Gracie missions gameplay. Despite Hopes and his coder doing patches to quash the bugs, they still got occasional bug reports from some people (non-android) not just here, but also in Hopes' discord.

Yes, it really blew up with v0.09.5's Exploring Lucania gameplay, but contracts gameplay (esp. main game) has been a plaguing issue of getting buggy since its inception; so attributing it all to that one Exploring Lucania part, is well..... quite understating the whole issue.


Now, don't get me wrong. I do quite like the current gameplay in contracts myself and I myself never experienced all the bugs etc that I saw other people reporting (nor am I advocating in any way of the gameplay's removal. Having said that, if Hopes wishes to change the gameplay into something much simpler, I'm not against it as long as he keeps consistency of what's in season 1 throughout all 3 seasons of DeLuca).
But even so, when people say game has become quite buggy since the contracts gameplay of v0.07, they're not really wrong in their statement.

Also, not like those 5 Wilfred's contracts are bug-free either; remember those 9999 Fedoras, 888 Bulletproof vests, and 77 trousers?
Iirc, I don't think that bug is fixed yet, among maybe one or two small bugs in those contracts.

 

[Jimayo]

Now, don't get me wrong. I do quite like the current gameplay in contracts myself and I myself never experienced all the bugs etc that I saw other people reporting.

I like them too but if they're doubling or tripling development time it's not worth it.

 

[JJJ84]

If you think getting rewards from the contract is a bug (regardless of how many you already have), I don't know what to say.
It's not a bug to gain the reward, that's how it's supposed to work. There is nothing unexpected, or not as designed, about that.
The only thing that's an issue, is not being able to get rid of them by either selling, or dumping. But that's not a bug, either.
It's merely an oversight in the design that allows us to continually get something we have numerous instances of, already.

Um, not sure why you quoted the same post twice, with same replies.

The bug I'm referring to is not the reward of getting additional gear by grinding/replay of contracts.
I'm referring to the issue where numbers of certain gear grew in number without even playing through the contract, but fiddling around with equipping and unequipping aspect.

I once remember unequipping a certain gear making a double of that gear in the MC's gear list for no reason, and seen at least 2 other people report them as well back then.
And sure, this is by no means game breaking (contracts still work even with that present), but no doubt it is a bug.

That's what I was referring to, not the receiving gear through manual playthrough.

 

[Jimayo]

Sigh, more "if".
Maybe you should discover if they actually are, before claiming it's something to take note of.

The 5 main contracts had nothing that required hours of work.
They're simply text based revenue generators that have no impact on the main story, or the main missions.

Sigh, use more logic please. Before the new game play 3-6 months per update, after 9+ months. I wonder why they took significantly longer once he changed the gameplay. Surely there is no causation there.

 

[Cartageno]

The 5 main contracts had nothing that required hours of work.
They're simply text based revenue generators that have no impact on the main story, or the main missions.

Yeah, but having them and then have everything abandoned in the next part - no higher level contracts, no nothing - would feel off to me. Maybe a bit like introducing a rich eccentric uncle to some TV show in the first season and then completely forgetting about him from then on forward. There would be a lack of consistency.

I'm still not convinced that taking out the contract gameplay (if that even is what we are talking about) would improve the game, but having some unconnected remainders in the finished game also does not seem like a perfect solution to me.

 

[whichone]

Yeah, but having them and then have everything abandoned in the next part - no higher level contracts, no nothing - would feel off to me. Maybe a bit like introducing a rich eccentric uncle to some TV show in the first season and then completely forgetting about him from then on forward. There would be a lack of consistency.

I'm not sure what you're trying to dispute? I agree.
I already said I was looking forward to the next tiers of contracts, C, B, A, when we finally get our next promotion(s).
What I presented is a reason for them to remain, not to be got rid of.

The only thing that needs to be got rid of, is using the contract mechanic for main story stuff.
It works absolutely fine for the 5 D rank revenue generator contracts.
There has been nothing but issues (quite a few game breaking) with the same mechanic being used for story related stuff.
It's pretty obvious where the problem lies & where it does not.

 

[JJJ84]

Yeah, but having them and then have everything abandoned in the next part - no higher level contracts, no nothing - would feel off to me. Maybe a bit like introducing a rich eccentric uncle to some TV show in the first season and then completely forgetting about him from then on forward. There would be a lack of consistency.

I'm still not convinced that taking out the contract gameplay (if that even is what we are talking about) would improve the game, but having some unconnected remainders in the finished game also does not seem like a perfect solution to me.

Yeah. This is something I mentioned to Hopes; whether he keeps the Contracts gameplay around, or whether he scraps the gameplay and changes it into something more simplified, consistency should always be the key.
Otherwise, if season 1 has the residue of the contract (with some elements stripped/axed away) whereas season 2 has none of it cause it's scrapped, it's really gonna feel off.
And he agrees.

Anyway, Hopes told me yesterday that him and his coder Mobil have been in discussions about it, and depending on further discussions, he may keep the contracts around (with a bit of rework perhaps).
However, this is not the final decision; there's still stuff that they will both look into, before that final decision.

So regardless of whether one hopes he keeps the gameplay around or scraps them, he will let it be known soon enough, and he'll also read and address what everyone's been saying in this thread.

 

[Lorenz1]

Wait, so Hopes threw like a year of development into pure coding for contracts, and now he is going to throw them away? Lol. Lmao, even.

Who would have thought that developing side quests and coding instead of the main story is a bad fucking idea in a game with a release pace of BDIK. The game had been standing in one place for the last what, three updates now? I don't think plot or characters got any advancement after Gracie BJ update.

 

[Cartageno]

I don't think plot or characters got any advancement after Gracie BJ update.

Ummm ... granted, it is not an LotR amount of story content, but some pretty significant stuff came after that ...

 

[Lorenz1]

Ummm ... granted, it is not an LotR amount of story content, but some pretty significant stuff came after that ...

You mean the shot part? That's like a single scene. Everything else was either contracts, or fillers.

 

[Cartageno]

You mean the shot part? That's like a single scene. Everything else was either contracts, or fillers.

No matter what you call "filler" here, or similar, I would say that the scene does not sound as "not any advancement of plot or characters" even if short and on its own.

 

[Lorenz1]

No matter what you call "filler" here, or similar, I would say that the scene does not sound as "not any advancement of plot or characters" even if short and on its own.

So... in like what, two years, we got a single scene of progression? Rejoice, I guess.

Anyhow, to waste a year on coding revamp specifically to make contracts possible, only to make like 10 mediocre cash contracts and three filler mini-stories, and drop the entire thing two years later, is pointless and wasteful at the extreme.

I can't even remember when was the last time Luna, the main love interest, got any solo scene. How many years ago was that? Four?

I've no idea how this game is even alive at this point with those priorities and this pace of development.

 

[Regularus]

I don't think it's a good idea to remove contracts completely, even if they're not really great as they currently are, a contract system is a good part of what makes the AVN different from the other.

But i think contracts instead should be improved as simple text-based (as in those old cool gamebook from the eighties) mini-adventures without so many clicks to do, and would work better than the slow "click to move in another useless location" current version of the contracts.

 

[Cartageno]

So... in like what, two years, we got a single scene of progression? Rejoice, I guess.

Anyhow, to waste a year on coding revamp specifically to make contracts possible, only to make like 10 mediocre cash contracts and three filler mini-stories, and drop the entire thing two years later, is pointless and wasteful at the extreme.

I can't even remember when was the last time Luna, the main love interest, got any solo scene. How many years ago was that? Four?

I've no idea how this game is even alive at this point with those priorities and this pace of development.

I would argue Luna being the "main love interest". She possibly is the most popular one, but nothing in the story hints at any main interest for me. If anything, then it would by formula be Cordia (main LI will take the longest).

And the game is alive because it is (as announced) not a professional game but a hobby. Just like my sports carreer is alive despite me not being successful in any regard. That there was little content - and even less if some of it gets axed - I will not deny. However, if anything goes wrong with the ideas you have, stuff happens. In games with gameplay mechanics more so than in straightforward AVNs (but they're not immune neither).

 

[Lorenz1]

I would argue Luna being the "main love interest". She possibly is the most popular one, but nothing in the story hints at any main interest for me.

Dev literally said multiple times that Luna is the main love interest, specifically because of that you can not progress the story without dating her.

The question is not in the quantity of content (hobby is a hobby), it's in the way it is focused. Dev did literally nothing to develop the actual main story or main girls in years, fumbling about with filler contracts and coding revamps instead. If he made a single scene per 3 month with main girls, the game would have had another season by today.