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

[Living In A Lewd World]

I always get a little worried when a developer starts responding to criticism and/or trolls, because it can end up being just a screaming match. But your response was quick, to the point factual, understandable and professional. So I was glad to see that. While I would want faster updates with much content (who doesn't), I don't mind waiting for quality content. I am really glad you did the mole rat storyline because I wasn't interested in Maxine at all, but now I am very much invested in her.

As I was busy with school projects to finalize my graduation, I only completed Mykock’s Manor 2 a couple of days ago. When continuing at the previous poll results I was happy to see 4 of my “choices” won. Adding to that, seeing your stroke of genius with the transparent underwear made me change my mind about the preferred underwear. So 5/7 final choices had my approval. I do have a question about the first poll question of Mykock's Manor 1. In Mykock’s Manor 2 it shows 71% voted to not punish Reilly Goodhead (which is obviously the right choice because a good boss, leader, manager or CEO should train the people below them to make the right decisions when they are not available, because 1 person cannot do the work of 20+ people by themselves as there are not enough hours in a day and punishing subordinates for making the correct decisions can't be helpfull), but Paul Mykock was lying to Reilly Goodhead that the poll result said she did need punishment.

Spoiler: Result poll 1

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Spoiler: Mykock's Manor 2

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So my question is: are the results of the poll accidently reversed for this question or is Paul Mykock just trying to get his way
and will this be resolved with Reilly Goodhead finding out the truth?

As for the poll in Mykock’s Manor 2. Without changes to the designs my vote would be:1-4-5-3-2. But my own personal best would be an alteration to option 1: having option 1 being made from the transparent material instead or using option 1 as is but with transparent colored underwear material with the color being either red or the blue/purple tint from option 4. Maybe option 5 could be used as a beach, swimming and volleyball outfit with one of the other outfits as official punishment outfit? Personally I dislike dominatrix characters (unless they deep down want to be dominated and use this persona to find a real dominant man and filter out the weak ones) as well as their outfits and I agree with other on this forum that Miss Newman doesn’t fit as a dominatrix. This is why I put option 3 and 2 at the bottom. But me not being a patreon feel free to ignore all I said. With the transparent underwear idea as proof I have faith you will surprise and satisfy us all in time. I can’t wait for more Ruth and Charlotte.

Lastly I couldn’t find the result of this poll, is the result already released?

This is a screenshot from Patreon:

Spoiler: poll result

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[M. Giganteus]

This is a screenshot from Patreon:

Spoiler: poll result

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TY, then the data is swapped in Mykock's Manor .Guess I am back down to 4/7 poll questions in my favor.

 

[AltosandHerdone]

I always get a little worried when a developer starts responding to criticism and/or trolls, because it can end up being just a screaming match. But your response was quick, to the point factual, understandable and professional. So I was glad to see that. While I would want faster updates with much content (who doesn't), I don't mind waiting for quality content. I am really glad you did the mole rat storyline because I wasn't interested in Maxine at all, but now I am very much invested in her.

As I was busy with school projects to finalize my graduation, I only completed Mykock’s Manor 2 a couple of days ago. When continuing at the previous poll results I was happy to see 4 of my “choices” won. Adding to that, seeing your stroke of genius with the transparent underwear made me change my mind about the preferred underwear. So 5/7 final choices had my approval. I do have a question about the first poll question of Mykock's Manor 1. In Mykock’s Manor 2 it shows 71% voted to not punish Reilly Goodhead (which is obviously the right choice because a good boss, leader, manager or CEO should train the people below them to make the right decisions when they are not available, because 1 person cannot do the work of 20+ people by themselves as there are not enough hours in a day and punishing subordinates for making the correct decisions can't be helpfull), but Paul Mykock was lying to Reilly Goodhead that the poll result said she did need punishment.

Spoiler: Result poll 1

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Spoiler: Mykock's Manor 2

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So my question is: are the results of the poll accidently reversed for this question or is Paul Mykock just trying to get his way
and will this be resolved with Reilly Goodhead finding out the truth?

As for the poll in Mykock’s Manor 2. Without changes to the designs my vote would be:1-4-5-3-2. But my own personal best would be an alteration to option 1: having option 1 being made from the transparent material instead or using option 1 as is but with transparent colored underwear material with the color being either red or the blue/purple tint from option 4. Maybe option 5 could be used as a beach, swimming and volleyball outfit with one of the other outfits as official punishment outfit? Personally I dislike dominatrix characters (unless they deep down want to be dominated and use this persona to find a real dominant man and filter out the weak ones) as well as their outfits and I agree with other on this forum that Miss Newman doesn’t fit as a dominatrix. This is why I put option 3 and 2 at the bottom. But me not being a patreon feel free to ignore all I said. With the transparent underwear idea as proof I have faith you will surprise and satisfy us all in time. I can’t wait for more Ruth and Charlotte.

Lastly I couldn’t find the result of this poll, is the result already released?

Looks like I messed up when filling in the table for part 2. The majority did indeed vote for Reilly to be punished.

 

[AltosandHerdone]

You got me curious, so if you don't mind sharing...
What is the oldest image in the game?
Who was the first girl rendered?
Specific to my favorite girl, what was the first image of Lucy?

This was Lucy's first appearance in the game on day one. She was one of the first student's you can speak to after leaving your office.

As for the very first character rendered, I could not tell you. I made and remade the oldest scenes several times over, constantly refining the models and environments until I was happy with them (and I still tweak them to this day).
Here are some of the earliest renders I made back in early 2018. As you can see, they were complete garbage, lol. Lucky for you guys I don't give up easily and kept at it until I got good at both character design and rendering. What a difference several thousand hours of practice makes...

 

[Cartageno]

This was Lucy's first appearance in the game on day one. She was one of the first student's you can speak to after leaving your office.
View attachment 3589644
As for the very first character rendered, I could not tell you. I made and remade the oldest scenes several times over, constantly refining the models and environments until I was happy with them (and I still tweak them to this day).
Here are some of the earliest renders I made back in early 2018. As you can see, they were complete garbage, lol. Lucky for you guys I don't give up easily and kept at it until I got good at both character design and rendering. What a difference several thousand hours of practice makes...
View attachment 3589707
View attachment 3589708
View attachment 3589709
View attachment 3589710
View attachment 3589711
View attachment 3589712
View attachment 3589737

Phew, some of them really have changed. I'd argue Priti is the closest to the original version, while some others are hardly recognizable.

 

[ccxvidonaferens]

Thank you, I appreciate the kind words.
Yes, I fully admit that I got sidelined with the mole rat storyline, and I've spoken about that at length before. There were a lot of reasons for this. However, one of the main ones was that I did not properly think through a poll. I was surprised by people's choice and had a hard time pulling off what I promised. That said, I do not regret making that storyline, I think it will make a good chapter break before we move into Chapter 3. I just have a little bit of catching up to do first.
The Mykock's Manor specials probably took me about 50 hours each to make. Not a lot from my point of view, especially as they were a fun change of pace. The manor environment and girls were already made, ready to appear in the main game at some point. So, most of that time was spent deciding on the outfit choices; something I would have had to do whether or not I made the specials. On the whole it was probably only a few days additional work each time to make the specials rather than not. I have always put a lot of creative energy into my polls, the only difference now is that everyone gets to benefit from that time. Plus, by testing things out visually in a special I avoid the situation of promising something I later find is hard to deliver, such as the fundraiser. Is it the most efficient way to do polls? Certainly not. Is it a fun and unique way to engage with my fans and make them feel part of the story? I believe so.

Out of curiosity, out of all the different characters, game mechanics, scenes and animations etc, so far what would you say the trickiest thing to get right was and the one that provided you the most satisfaction in getting just how you envisaged?

 

[rgrtbrtbrtbr]

FWIW the mole rat story is my favorite and IMO hottest part of the game. It's definitely a departure from where the story was going before, but it's so good I don't care.

 

[raven54]

This analysis is completely misleading because it doesn't take into account the number of words, renders or videos in each release (or the quality for that matter).

I wrote that a year ago (almost precisely). Nothing has changed, including new posts appearing, which somehow assumes each update to be of equal size. As such this issue shouldn't be new to the followers of this thread. I will take the liberty of assuming that most people here aren't upset with the update frequency/quality, though in a way that is self fulfilling as upset people will likely leave.

While you do have a point in endless projects, you also have flawed logic. You assume equal amount of work with each release. The thing is, each release has bugfixes in past content and with each release, past content increases. On top of that, newer renders are of higher quality and a bunch of old renders have been replaced to match the newer renders in quality. For instance Lucy dancing will no longer show her pigtail clipping through her torso. Also videos are added where still frames were used before. All this obviously takes time to add without providing "new" contents, yet it improves the overall impression.

On top of that you assume each release will have the same amount of new text. You can't make that assumption. Most likely the amount of render and text increases in each release have increased as the number of releases per year goes down. I will also argue that adding more text now could be a slower process as the world building is pretty much set and as such writing new personality building storylines have a higher risk of clashing with previously written text. This means more details to cross check.

 

[ymisoinsane]

This analysis is completely misleading because it doesn't take into account the number of words, renders or videos in each release (or the quality for that matter). From roughly 0.9 onward, the updates more than doubled in size. Early updates were around 20K works and a few hundred renders, current ones are around 50K words and over a thousand renders, plus dozens of videos (early updates had almost no videos files). Early on I also had a back catalog of writing and renders to work with (I was working on this game for about a year before 0.1), whereas these days I have to write the equivalent of a novels worth of dialogue from scratch every six months, on top of all the rendering, animations and Patreon management. You are also completely ignoring the improvements in quality, which I have invested significant amounts of my time improving over the years. I have had a small team helping me with the code and animations since version 0.12, however, that has mostly led to improved quality (less bugs, better UI, gameplay and animations) rather than faster development. I still have to do the vast majority of the creative work myself which creates a bottleneck in terms of production speed. On average, each update takes me around 1000 hours, which roughly equates to six months working regular office hours. I will put in 12 hour days if a deadline is looming or I am having fun with a scene or special. However, I can not maintain that pace over the long term. I am only human. Unfortunately, I would not be able to go back to quarterly releases without significantly reducing the size or quality of each update.

This is a fair point. I did not intend to imply that these updates were equal scope or size. I was trying to illustrate the growth of the story. Depending on how you define you workload your critique is valid.
Also I am certainly not a troll as some other person said. I have a great appreciation for the work games take. I have more experience in this area than many here would understand. The only reason I even bothered to comment is because of how much this game stands out from the others on this site. You can see I generally keep to myself.

I suppose my grip is surrounding *where* the effort takes place. The original goal for subscribing was to increase output and increase releases. As others have pointed out, the storyline has slowed down (and there are may open stories such as: Yoga on the weekends, Nude beach, fantasy board game, Ms Chang etc.). I know some polls have pushed you to update other things. As much as engagement with your supporters is important sometimes giving them an update they DON'T want is better so they anticipate the update they DO want.
Additionally, some of the new dialog reiterates things the player already knows. You may have written the original explanation four years ago but the player just saw the MC explain his feelings less than an hour ago. You can save writing time and allow the player to insert themselves into the mind of the MC.
Finally, patrol events add a lot more to the game then they are given credit for and should be a focus in and of themselves. I think you have talked about this previously at some point so see my point about allowing the subscribers to dictate your focus.

If you are now the bottleneck then the amount of subscribers and financial support should help find a way through this problem. There are many creative people out there that can help with this burden. You are the leader of a small company of sorts now. Ultimately your delegation, approval, and oversite would be the key to continued success.

Anyway, I appreciate your initial response. I am sure you are not interested in a back and forth in a public forum with some bloke on the internet. I truly wish you luck and hope to resubscribe soon.

 

[AltosandHerdone]

Out of curiosity, out of all the different characters, game mechanics, scenes and animations etc, so far what would you say the trickiest thing to get right was and the one that provided you the most satisfaction in getting just how you envisaged?

Tough question. I have struggled with a lot of things over the years. Figuring out the headmaster's justifications for all the clearly perverse and immoral things he does, and trying to keep them consistent and believable (at least within the context of the games world) isn't as easy as I make it look. I usually have at least a couple of weeks in each update cycle where I'm really stressed out trying to figure these things out. I normally just keep obsessing over the details until everything suddenly falls into place. I think Rachel's storyline was the hardest from that point of view. However, finally having that eureka moment and figuring out how to tie the scenes together and to get to the ending I want is always very satisfying. So I guess the hardest and most satisfying parts are often the same thing.
I think my favourite scene to make is probably still the water fight. I had a lot of fun with that one. Also, that was one of the first scenes I made after quitting my day job to do this full time, so it was extra enjoyable to be doing something so fun and creative instead of sitting in an office doing a job I hated.

 

[Hanny2000]

Tough question. I have struggled with a lot of things over the years. Figuring out the headmaster's justifications for all the clearly perverse and immoral things he does, and trying to keep them consistent and believable (at least within the context of the games world) isn't as easy as I make it look. I usually have at least a couple of weeks in each update cycle where I'm really stressed out trying to figure these things out. I normally just keep obsessing over the details until everything suddenly falls into place. I think Rachel's storyline was the hardest from that point of view. However, finally having that eureka moment and figuring out how to tie the scenes together and to get to the ending I want is always very satisfying. So I guess the hardest and most satisfying parts are often the same thing.
I think my favourite scene to make is probably still the water fight. I had a lot of fun with that one. Also, that was one of the first scenes I made after quitting my day job to do this full time, so it was extra enjoyable to be doing something so fun and creative instead of sitting in an office doing a job I hated.

I totally agree with you.
When I first applied as a teacher, I was hoping to teach high school students, but I got to teach young learners instead. I only work four days a week, but I had to teach two subjects, I like teaching English. I did teach English Grammar though, but I also had to teach ICT (Computer).
As much as I like teaching, I worked for three months, to see wether I should continue or not.
Well, I resigned after three months. Because I couldn't handle teaching many classes.

I taught two subjects, English Grammar and ICT.
I don't teach on Wednesday.

Monday to Tuesday, I teach ICT.
Class 4A&4B, 5A&5B, 6A&6B.
Six classes in total.

Thursday to Friday, I teach English Grammar.
Class 1A&1B, 2A&2B,...,6A&B.
Twelve classes in total.
I taught almost twenty classes each week.
I also used 5 different books to teach these classes.
That's why I resigned.

 

[ccxvidonaferens]

I think my favourite scene to make is probably still the water fight. I had a lot of fun with that one. Also, that was one of the first scenes I made after quitting my day job to do this full time, so it was extra enjoyable to be doing something so fun and creative instead of sitting in an office doing a job I hated.

I'll admit, that water gun fight gave me a real heavy nostalgia kick due to the music and sound effects used. It's been over a quarter century but I still remember Goldeneye on the N64 fondly. Still have it somewhere in the house, in fact.

 

[Perniciousducks]

This is a fair point. I did not intend to imply that these updates were equal scope or size. I was trying to illustrate the growth of the story. Depending on how you define you workload your critique is valid.
Also I am certainly not a troll as some other person said. I have a great appreciation for the work games take. I have more experience in this area than many here would understand. The only reason I even bothered to comment is because of how much this game stands out from the others on this site. You can see I generally keep to myself.

I suppose my grip is surrounding *where* the effort takes place. The original goal for subscribing was to increase output and increase releases. As others have pointed out, the storyline has slowed down (and there are may open stories such as: Yoga on the weekends, Nude beach, fantasy board game, Ms Chang etc.). I know some polls have pushed you to update other things. As much as engagement with your supporters is important sometimes giving them an update they DON'T want is better so they anticipate the update they DO want.
Additionally, some of the new dialog reiterates things the player already knows. You may have written the original explanation four years ago but the player just saw the MC explain his feelings less than an hour ago. You can save writing time and allow the player to insert themselves into the mind of the MC.
Finally, patrol events add a lot more to the game then they are given credit for and should be a focus in and of themselves. I think you have talked about this previously at some point so see my point about allowing the subscribers to dictate your focus.

If you are now the bottleneck then the amount of subscribers and financial support should help find a way through this problem. There are many creative people out there that can help with this burden. You are the leader of a small company of sorts now. Ultimately your delegation, approval, and oversite would be the key to continued success.

Anyway, I appreciate your initial response. I am sure you are not interested in a back and forth in a public forum with some bloke on the internet. I truly wish you luck and hope to resubscribe soon.

Summary:

By subscribing I wanted more content, and while you provided more and better content, you didn’t do it specifically in the way I wanted.

You do polls and focus on what your patrons want, but have you considered it would be better to do what I think is important instead?

Now that you have other people contributing, have you considered hiring a writer to write your story for you?

 

[wojtowicz]

Bruh cassandras blowjob was hard to play i had an "teeth" bJ as my first and last never again i let a girls mouth near my jr.
Anyway love this game its my favorit game ever hope it will never end love it love it prob bcs im a DOM still love it
but plz stop with this wierd pain blowjobs hopefully it was just one time my ptsd kicking in

 

[Sorairi]

I hope somebody reads this. I have a little bug. Idk if it's my save file. I'm pretty far into the story, right now I'm doing Henriette's contraband quest. The thing is, there are some quests I can't do because I can't access the office, everytime I click on the door, it skips to the next part of the day. Anyone else have this problem? or a Fix?

 

[snideremark]

I have a pretty strange bug in my playthrough. For some reason Cassandra's quest didn't show up for me at all. The quest isn't listed in the Quests screen, but strangely enough I can still kind of do the quests. There are some strange things with it though, firstly punishing her tells me she can't be leveled up when she actually can be leveled up (this happened up to lvl 4), also and connected to this I think is that the 'Mouse over for hint' hint before punishing tells me to do certain things to be able to level her up (like enact rules) that I have already done. At last (kind of understandable as the game seems to think I lack the requirements) there are no guided punishments for her up until also lvl 4.

Edit: Interestingly, after I finished the quest it now finally shows up in the quest screen.

 

[raven54]

I hope somebody reads this. I have a little bug. Idk if it's my save file. I'm pretty far into the story, right now I'm doing Henriette's contraband quest. The thing is, there are some quests I can't do because I can't access the office, everytime I click on the door, it skips to the next part of the day. Anyone else have this problem? or a Fix?

Generally speaking, bug reports can be kind of useless unless the developer can reproduce the issue. If everybody else trying the same thing goes "works for me", then there really isn't much to do about it as nobody will have a clue to what could have gone wrong.

The easiest way to get other people to reproduce an issue is to provide a savegame where the issue happens consistently. Often that is the only way to figure out what went wrong.

As for this specific bug, I have no clue to what the problem could be. I might have if I had access to the source code, but then again it is a case of works for most people, so it's probably an issue with some variable not being set correctly.

 

[Cartageno]

Generally speaking, bug reports can be kind of useless unless the developer can reproduce the issue. If everybody else trying the same thing goes "works for me", then there really isn't much to do about it as nobody will have a clue to what could have gone wrong.

The easiest way to get other people to reproduce an issue is to provide a savegame where the issue happens consistently. Often that is the only way to figure out what went wrong.

As for this specific bug, I have no clue to what the problem could be. I might have if I had access to the source code, but then again it is a case of works for most people, so it's probably an issue with some variable not being set correctly.

Your suggestion of sharing a save is still valid though, because not only may be someone out there to figure out what went wrong, but even if not that we can check whether we will have the same issue (which means it's in the save) or not (which means that for whatever reason some bits got drunk at the OP's place and a simple redownload of the game might fix it).

 

[devonY7]

Development Update 54

Spoiler: dev update april 26

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[ymisoinsane]

Summary:

By subscribing I wanted more content, and while you provided more and better content, you didn’t do it specifically in the way I wanted.

You do polls and focus on what your patrons want, but have you considered it would be better to do what I think is important instead?

Now that you have other people contributing, have you considered hiring a writer to write your story for you?

No. But reading is tough so I'll help you out mate.

By subscribing I wanted more content, and while you provided more and better content, you didn’t do it specifically in the way I wanted. - Wanted more frequent updates which is what was promised, on the Patreon site, by the developer and not delivered. He argued they had more 'content' per update but that was not the original issue.

You do polls and focus on what your patrons want, but have you considered it would be better to do what I think is important instead? - I don't care if he listens to my specific needs. But he should listen to his own. He literally just posted "I fully admit that I got sidelined with the mole rat storyline, and I've spoken about that at length before. There were a lot of reasons for this. However, one of the main ones was that I did not properly think through a poll. I was surprised by people's choice and had a hard time pulling off what I promised." My point was, he should focus on what he thinks is important before the masses. Working on patrol events are not going to win any polls. But if it needs to be done then do it save the mole rate stuff for another time.
If I were talking about my own interests I would have him focus on the sports club /gym / volleyball because there is a lot there I would like to see but I didn't mention any of those things. Instead I'm proposing things that would help him, move the story along, save time, and reduce the stress.

Now that you have other people contributing, have you considered hiring a writer to write your story for you? - This one doesn't make any sense. He already hires people to do work on the game. He already said he is the bottleneck. He already said his hours are long. People can help write copy. It happens all the time. He can hire people to help create graphics but not write dialog? It doesn't mean they have to write the whole thing.

Disagree with me all you want but don't put words in my mouth.