Ren'Py The Headmaster [Mykock's Manor Ch.3] [Altos and Herdone]

[Uwukz]

Totally agree - new content is desperately needed to prevent the whole project from going stale. But throwing the whole "dev milking" BS into the mix is way off. This dev is still giving it his best shot. Things have just become a bit too complex. I think his own perfectionism is the biggest banana skin at this stage.

You can't say that the developer has abandoned the game or endlessly makes excuses to do nothing. But you should realise that now the pace of development is about one update per 9 months (practically a year), and the update itself has a duration of half an hour, if you know how to activate new content. But there are many girls in the game, and the author is adding new ones. The game is already 6 years old, and the final most delicious content is a long way off.
And now we have to ask the question. When will we see the final game and will we live to see it at all? Or will it be left to our grandchildren and the author's grandchildren? The pace of development is completely inefficient and pointless. But apparently the author is satisfied with it, because it has been going on for years, for him it is a "workhorse", and there is no need to talk about any realisation of creativity, he doesn't care whether the game will have a final and whether we will live to see it at all.....
And I didn't even mention the obsolescence of the game, which is already present in some places! And what will happen in 5 years or more is even scary to think about.
I'm betting that at some point the game will finally become obsolete or the author will get bored and the game will die completely.
It's depressing.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a hater of this game, I like it, it's just that my realism suggests a bad outcome.

 

[oceanbobo4]

You can't say that the developer has abandoned the game or endlessly makes excuses to do nothing. But you should realise that now the pace of development is about one update per 9 months (practically a year), and the update itself has a duration of half an hour, if you know how to activate new content. But there are many girls in the game, and the author is adding new ones. The game is already 6 years old, and the final most delicious content is a long way off.
And now we have to ask the question. When will we see the final game and will we live to see it at all? Or will it be left to our grandchildren and the author's grandchildren? The pace of development is completely inefficient and pointless. But apparently the author is satisfied with it, because it has been going on for years, for him it is a "workhorse", and there is no need to talk about any realisation of creativity, he doesn't care whether the game will have a final and whether we will live to see it at all.....
And I didn't even mention the obsolescence of the game, which is already present in some places! And what will happen in 5 years or more is even scary to think about.
I'm betting that at some point the game will finally become obsolete or the author will get bored and the game will die completely.
It's depressing.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a hater of this game, I like it, it's just that my realism suggests a bad outcome.

The advantage of the Headmaster's cartoon style is . . . it will never be obsolete. Cartoons in this style have been around for a hundred years.

As long as the game is supported on Patreon, the game should continue, and that could very well be years, which I would welcome.

 

[Uwukz]

The advantage of the Headmaster's cartoon style is . . . it will never be obsolete. Cartoons in this style have been around for a hundred years.

As long as the game is supported on Patreon, the game should continue, and that could very well be years, which I would welcome.

The problem is that if the author doesn't change anything in his work on the game, there will be a couple of hours worth of content coming out in YEARS and YEARS of work at best. That's very little.
The speed of game development is somewhere on the level of a snail.

 

[ccxvidonaferens]

The advantage of the Headmaster's cartoon style is . . . it will never be obsolete.

I don't wish to feed the narrative regarding the slow pace of development, but I think when people talk about obsolescence in relation to this game they are more often talking about the underlying tech of the game engine or assets potentially becoming unsupported if development time runs too long. I could be wrong however.

 

[raven54]

I don't wish to feed the narrative regarding the slow pace of development, but I think when people talk about obsolescence in relation to this game they are more often talking about the underlying tech of the game engine or assets potentially becoming unsupported if development time runs too long. I could be wrong however.

The underlying technology is Ren'Py, which is under active development. It will be updated once in a while so it will support future computer systems. The only potential issue would be PlayHome, but some people claim the graphic development has been migrated to a 3D program, which is under active development, better and more future proof. Considering that there are still mods being made for 20 year old games, I don't fear development of the Headmaster stopping because the game/tools becomes outdated.

The advantage of the Headmaster's cartoon style is . . . it will never be obsolete. Cartoons in this style have been around for a hundred years.

Whenever people bring up better graphics, I point out that they are "good enough" because the game is downloaded and there are apparently enough patreons. If games needs to have the newest graphics to be playable, then there wouldn't be a marked for GOG to still sell DOS games.

But you should realise that now the pace of development is about one update per 9 months (practically a year), and the update itself has a duration of half an hour, if you know how to activate new content.

You do realize you are supposed to actually stop at each text and read it, right? Half an hour seems way off. I haven't timed it, but it seems to me that the updates actually have noteworthy updates. I can't recall ever seeing all the new content in a single day.

 

[The Pull Out King]

Played through the current version ages ago whenever it first released and haven't really checked back since them. Surprised that it still hasn't come out yet, but from what I gather scanning through recent comments is that it's expected in October? Is that correct?

I love the game but I just don't have the patience to keep up monthly with all of these year-long or more development cycle games these days.

 

[LegendBear]

Played through the current version ages ago whenever it first released and haven't really checked back since them. Surprised that it still hasn't come out yet, but from what I gather scanning through recent comments is that it's expected in October? Is that correct?

I love the game but I just don't have the patience to keep up monthly with all of these year-long or more development cycle games these days.

There's a whole nother chapter that needs to come out. I wouldn't expect it for another 4-5 years at this rate. The update coming this fall is just another regular one, not the ending update.

 

[SpectyrX]

You can't say that the developer has abandoned the game or endlessly makes excuses to do nothing. But you should realise that now the pace of development is about one update per 9 months (practically a year), and the update itself has a duration of half an hour, if you know how to activate new content. But there are many girls in the game, and the author is adding new ones. The game is already 6 years old, and the final most delicious content is a long way off.
And now we have to ask the question. When will we see the final game and will we live to see it at all? Or will it be left to our grandchildren and the author's grandchildren? The pace of development is completely inefficient and pointless. But apparently the author is satisfied with it, because it has been going on for years, for him it is a "workhorse", and there is no need to talk about any realisation of creativity, he doesn't care whether the game will have a final and whether we will live to see it at all.....
And I didn't even mention the obsolescence of the game, which is already present in some places! And what will happen in 5 years or more is even scary to think about.
I'm betting that at some point the game will finally become obsolete or the author will get bored and the game will die completely.
It's depressing.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a hater of this game, I like it, it's just that my realism suggests a bad outcome.

People want to believe so they do. They are deluding themselves though. I loved this game when I first played it, years ago. Now, it just feels like a joke. I see an update posted and I just think, "meh, it's not going to amount to much so should I even bother downloading it." This isn't being negative, it's being realistic. If the game was going to be finished, ever, it would either get more frequent updates *or* the updates would be larger. Both cycles work but I don't have any optimism that anything will change with this game.

 

[Uwukz]

People want to believe so they do. They are deluding themselves though. I loved this game when I first played it, years ago. Now, it just feels like a joke. I see an update posted and I just think, "meh, it's not going to amount to much so should I even bother downloading it." This isn't being negative, it's being realistic. If the game was going to be finished, ever, it would either get more frequent updates *or* the updates would be larger. Both cycles work but I don't have any optimism that anything will change with this game.

Totally agree with you.
For some reason people are very fond of self-deception, hoping for some "better in the future". But it's not going to happen, people should take off the "rose coloured glasses", well, or live in "happy oblivion", even though it's a shitty outcome.
I wrote my posts above because I even wondered why people here are happy with the current pace of development of this game and there is no criticism. Even though other games with similar development rates people criticise all the time.
To be clear, I started following the game before I went to college, and now I'm almost finished with my studies. And for all this huge amount of time of plot advancement and corrupting at least half of the cast of protagonists has not even got to a simple regular blowjob.
Is the author of this game going to develop it longer than all the past and future GTA games put together, or what?
And I could probably understand such a long time if the author did some super high quality animations and so on. But no, watching some of them makes you feel like you're playing something from the Paleozoic Era.

 

[Living In A Lewd World]

Totally agree with you.
For some reason people are very fond of self-deception, hoping for some "better in the future". But it's not going to happen, people should take off the "rose coloured glasses", well, or live in "happy oblivion", even though it's a shitty outcome.
I wrote my posts above because I even wondered why people here are happy with the current pace of development of this game and there is no criticism. Even though other games with similar development rates people criticise all the time.
To be clear, I started following the game before I went to college, and now I'm almost finished with my studies. And for all this huge amount of time of plot advancement and corrupting at least half of the cast of protagonists has not even got to a simple regular blowjob.
Is the author of this game going to develop it longer than all the past and future GTA games put together, or what?
And I could probably understand such a long time if the author did some super high quality animations and so on. But no, watching some of them makes you feel like you're playing something from the Paleozoic Era.

Well some people like me might favour quality over quantity and with quality, I don't mean great animations, but rather interesting, relatable protagonists with divers characters and believable character-interactions in a story, that fits to them. Not just fuck-dolls, but characters, one really can start to care about. That's what most games unfortunately fail to deliver, even if they try to imitate the very same scenario, and make this a very outstanding game. And that is probably also the reason, why this game takes longer to be developed. The dev takes his time to think about character-development and does not just shoot out soul-less content, which one has forgotten ten minutes after playing. And that's also the reason why I'm willing to wait longer for an update and continue supporting the dev. If the updates came faster but with lower character quality, I’d actually be more likely to stop supporting

 

[Uwukz]

Well some people like me might favour quality over quantity and with quality, I don't mean great animations, but rather interesting, relatable protagonists with divers characters and believable character-interactions in a story, that fits to them. Not just fuck-dolls, but characters, one really can start to care about. That's what most games unfortunately fail to deliver, even if they try to imitate the very same scenario, and make this a very outstanding game. And that is probably also the reason, why this game takes longer to be developed. The dev takes his time to think about character-development and does not just shoot out soul-less content, which one has forgotten ten minutes after playing. And that's also the reason why I'm willing to wait longer for an update and continue supporting the dev. If the updates came faster but with lower character quality, I’d actually be more likely to stop supporting

It's funny how you pass off basic things like recognisable characters and their diverse ones as something so unimaginably cool. If the game doesn't have that, it's just a porn generator, stupid and pointless. And I can't even imagine what kind of devil shit you read, since this game is the pinnacle of perfection for you.
And whatever "interesting characters" are here, it's not worth 10 months of development during which the author makes a couple or three of some plot fragments and a few micro-events. In addition, because of such a large cast of characters and the scattering of updates, I don't even remember April and some other "interesting and diverse" characters, whose turn will come in about 5 years, but even then we'll see again a cut off incomplete piece of their plot. And so again we'll have to wait about 10 years for them to get their turn. The game is already 6 years old, and we still haven't even started with most of the characters. And knowing how the author stretches the corruption and development of characters, the game will take 50+ years to complete.
But we have "interesting and memorable" characters. And it doesn't matter at all that the speed of their development is 1-2 characters a year, and then some tiny incomplete part, after which they still need updates.

 

[SpectyrX]

Well some people like me might favour quality over quantity and with quality, I don't mean great animations, but rather interesting, relatable protagonists with divers characters and believable character-interactions in a story, that fits to them. Not just fuck-dolls, but characters, one really can start to care about. That's what most games unfortunately fail to deliver, even if they try to imitate the very same scenario, and make this a very outstanding game. And that is probably also the reason, why this game takes longer to be developed. The dev takes his time to think about character-development and does not just shoot out soul-less content, which one has forgotten ten minutes after playing. And that's also the reason why I'm willing to wait longer for an update and continue supporting the dev. If the updates came faster but with lower character quality, I’d actually be more likely to stop supporting

I would not argue with the quality of the games content. It's very good hence why I said I loved it when I played it. My issue is it's never going to be finished with the current rate of development. That's not a knock on how good the game is. I got to the end of the content and then over years I've downloaded multiple updates and been left disappointed every single time at how little there was. I've even ignored it for multiple updates in order to see if there would be more satisfaction once I came back to it only to still be disappointed. The pace of development on this game isn't just slow, it's laughably so.

 

[Xantoser]

I don’t know why people here keep reducing every discussion about the scope of this project and the development speed to a simple trade-off between quality and time. In real projects, there’s also the factor of available resources (budget), which directly affects what can be delivered within a given timeframe and at a certain level of quality.

This is the classic iron triangle of project management:
- If you want it faster: you need either more people/money, lower quality, or a smaller scope.
- If you want higher quality: you have to increase the budget or extend the timeline.
- If you have limited resources: you must either cut the scope or accept slower progress.

So, put simply: the real problem isn’t just balancing quality vs speed but whether the developers actually have enough resources to finish the project within a reasonable timeframe.

Personally, I think the scope is too big. Quality is fine, but the game would be better off with only a third of the storylines it currently tries to cover.

 

[TheGooseLamontae]

I don’t know why people here keep reducing every discussion about the scope of this project and the development speed to a simple trade-off between quality and time. In real projects, there’s also the factor of available resources (budget), which directly affects what can be delivered within a given timeframe and at a certain level of quality.

This is the classic iron triangle of project management:
- If you want it faster: you need either more people/money, lower quality, or a smaller scope.
- If you want higher quality: you have to increase the budget or extend the timeline.
- If you have limited resources: you must either cut the scope or accept slower progress.

So, put simply: the real problem isn’t just balancing quality vs speed but whether the developers actually have enough resources to finish the project within a reasonable timeframe.

Personally, I think the scope is too big. Quality is fine, but the game would be better off with only a third of the storylines it currently tries to cover.

It's a funding problem. The monthly checks will stop once the game is completed, creating a perverse incentive to keep it going indefinitely. Hence the conveniently large scope. It won't finish until the funding stops, because the devs don't want to be unemployed. Mortgages to pay and all that jazz. So all that's needed are updates big enough and often enough to please the backers.

 

[Living In A Lewd World]

I don’t know why people here keep reducing every discussion about the scope of this project and the development speed to a simple trade-off between quality and time. In real projects, there’s also the factor of available resources (budget), which directly affects what can be delivered within a given timeframe and at a certain level of quality.

This is the classic iron triangle of project management:
- If you want it faster: you need either more people/money, lower quality, or a smaller scope.
- If you want higher quality: you have to increase the budget or extend the timeline.
- If you have limited resources: you must either cut the scope or accept slower progress.

So, put simply: the real problem isn’t just balancing quality vs speed but whether the developers actually have enough resources to finish the project within a reasonable timeframe.

Personally, I think the scope is too big. Quality is fine, but the game would be better off with only a third of the storylines it currently tries to cover.

I think, the scope is definitely something, that adds to the length of the development, and probably rather exponentially than linearly, as the storylines and the characters in them are intertwined. But reducing the scope would take in my eyes also something of the uniqueness the game provides, and so one of its selling points. I'm actually not sure, if the game would have had the same success without that. But we will of course never gonna know that.

 

[Xantoser]

I think, the scope is definitely something, that adds to the length of the development, and probably rather exponentially than linearly, as the storylines and the characters in them are intertwined. But reducing the scope would take in my eyes also something of the uniqueness the game provides, and so one of its selling points. I'm actually not sure, if the game would have had the same success without that. But we will of course never gonna know that.

Ok, maybe let’s consider a concrete example. What do Zoe and those two other friends of Amy actually add to the story? They were introduced a few years ago and to this day they’ve got almost zero content.

 

[Living In A Lewd World]

Ok, maybe let’s consider a concrete example. What do Zoe and those two other friends of Amy actually add to the story? They were introduced a few years ago and to this day they’ve got almost zero content.

Regarding Olivia and Jasmine, I think, they are category C girls like Tia, so rather "bystanders" that won't get much of an own story or only progress in connection with the main cast.

And Zoe. She is definitely the great unknown, but she could play an important role in the end-game, maybe even drag some of the girls who are not lvl 10 yet on her side and set the school on fire (with Nina's lighter ), basically be the last big hurdle before the headmaster finally finds also her weakness and is also able to tame her and get all the girls to graduation, or he has to use all the girls he already educated to tame her as a big conclusion of his "educational arc". I actually see many possibilities and space to integrate her in the plot to keep the game interesting til the end

I don't know of course, what Altos has finally in his mind, but I don't think, he'll keep the game going til we have Crying Girl on Lvl 10 .

 

[raven54]

Now, it just feels like a joke. I see an update posted and I just think, "meh, it's not going to amount to much so should I even bother downloading it."

I'm not sure I believe you. If you really think that little of the game, why even bother to reply to this thread multiple times?

It's a funding problem. The monthly checks will stop once the game is completed, creating a perverse incentive to keep it going indefinitely.

Let's hypothetically assume this to be correct, then what? The story keeps growing and the patreons get what they expect and are happy. Where is the problem?

If people so desperately wants and ending, how about imagining the headmaster suffering a heart attack and not making it? You got the end of story you so desperately wants. It's not a satisfying ending, but it's a quick ending, which seems to be in demand by a very vocal tiny minority.

 

[TheGooseLamontae]

Let's hypothetically assume this to be correct, then what? The story keeps growing and the patreons get what they expect and are happy. Where is the problem?

You're absolutely right. I stopped paying years ago, so what do I care.

 

[Uwukz]

Let's hypothetically assume this to be correct, then what? The story keeps growing and the patreons get what they expect and are happy. Where is the problem?

Happiness in oblivion and stupidity of people.
Someone pays for projects whose authors lie all the time and do nothing. And nothing, the subscribers there "get what they expect and are happy".
The only problem is that these projects are stillborn, they will never become something great and amazing, and they won't even get a final. In fact, everything will always stand still. And the blame for this lies on those "happy subscribers" who pay for nothing and kill the game with their own hands.
The author of this game is certainly not so terrible in this respect. But for some reason he absolutely cannot make his work productive. And instead of some +- integral episode of content, as in the conditional Eternum, practically for a year we get several nibbled pieces of the plot, which personally I manage to pass at best in 30-40 minutes because I know the triggers (someone can pass it all day long pressing everything and not knowing how to call the necessary events, I'm not like that). I have no idea why the author does not make his workflow normal, so that for a year came out content for at least an hour and a half of careful reading.
So he himself doesn't care, "happy subscribers" are satisfied with these pathetic fragments, and then why change something and work more efficiently?
I think the basic message is clear. I'm not saying that the author should starve to death. But some "shock therapy" would be good for him, so that he started to move a little more and the game would have a decent in terms of content not by 2100, but at least by 2050 =)