Ren'Py The Null Hypothesis [v0.6a] [Ron Chon]

[armond]

It's a fallacy to treat the pace of project management as a function of the scarcity of resources. Some things are non-ergodic.

Put it this way: One pregnant woman gives birth to one baby in nine months. You can't just get another 8 women and then get the birth to happen within one month because you've now more resources allocated. This is so self-evidence yet managers will decide that throwing more programmers at a software project (or artists, or money) can half how long it takes and that's been proven decade after decade to be a fallacy.

Just look at modern AAA game development, insane budgets for the same trash smaller teams could make with a fraction of the budget 15 years ago.

 

[b_w_r]

Just look at modern AAA game development, insane budgets for the same trash smaller teams could make with a fraction of the budget 15 years ago.

Yup.

Duke Nukem 3D / Duke Nukem Forever.

 

[b_w_r]

The devs can introduce all 5 Stepford Cuckoos and then just kill a random one off whenever they need something dramatic to happen. Just like the comics!

Because I'm a contrarian shit, I think it'd be funnier if instead Wolverine keeps getting killed off like Kenny did in South Park. To the point Deadpool complains that his schtick is being stolen.

 

[mbRjpZLD]

It's a fallacy to treat the pace of project management as a function of the scarcity of resources. Some things are non-ergodic.

Put it this way: One pregnant woman gives birth to one baby in nine months. You can't just get another 8 women and then get the birth to happen within one month because you've now more resources allocated. This is so self-evidence yet managers will decide that throwing more programmers at a software project (or artists, or money) can half how long it takes and that's been proven decade after decade to be a fallacy.

you like to sound smart but you are missing the point. I was merely pointing out how slow development of this game is. Which is quite ironic considering this game was initially born out of frustration with Oni's slow progress.

 

[b_w_r]

you like to sound smart but you are missing the point. I was merely pointing out how slow development of this game is. Which is quite ironic considering this game was initially born out of frustration with Oni's slow progress.

Wait, you think Oni's progress is slow?

 

[leathermax]

Just look at modern AAA game development, insane budgets for the same trash smaller teams could make with a fraction of the budget 15 years ago.

But listen, how else are you gonna pay for millennial writers and Sweet Baby Inc's content curation to be as souless as possible?

 

[salscou]

Because I'm a contrarian shit, I think it'd be funnier if instead Wolverine keeps getting killed off like Kenny did in South Park. To the point Deadpool complains that his schtick is being stolen.

Hey come on!
I paid alot for a motorcycle helmet!
Dont kill him off before claws girl gets to ride around in a bike with her papa.

 

[Takkatakka]

But listen, how else are you gonna pay for millennial writers and Sweet Baby Inc's content curation to be as souless as possible?

Yeah, because those are the things that have ballooned game budgets. The two writers that get paid a half-time salary...

 

[b_w_r]

I don't think any generalised drop in the quality of scripts and writing in media can be attributed simply to the writers.

There's multiple problems compounding over the long term, some of them very obvious, some of them very technical and excruciatingly boring. Some of them are US legal specific which is why the quality problems in anime and manga for example are different even if it's easy to focus on the commonalities.

It won't piss off too many if I say "Disney shouldn't have been allowed acquire Marvel", but it will piss them off if I say "Marvel and DC should be broken up like the Bell System was and for the same fucking reason too."

You want better? Stopping letting them do things that mean they have to compete. Mergers end competition, end of competition means stagnation. When everyone has to find what's excellent and success means needing to reward talent to retain talent there's no room for grifters instructing behemoths in tone appropriate political correctness.

 

[Takkatakka]

I don't think any generalised drop in the quality of scripts and writing in media can be attributed simply to the writers.

I would even deny that this general drop even exist. There might've been a high in TV writing like 10 years ago, but before that most TV shows weren't exactly well written either and generally hit the reset button at the end of every episode.

Most games didn't even have a "writer", instead the producer outlined a few story beats during lunch break on a napkin and that would later become the "story" of the game. That's why stuff like the Sopranos for TV or something like Deus Ex for games was so groundbreaking back in the days.

It is the same for comics. There always be some shining beacons, but a lot of stuff for example during the early 90s was just...terrible. But of course as a human being we all have a tendency to forget about all the mediocre boring stuff and only remember what really flashed us and over time it feels like almost everything back then was great, because almost all the stuff we remember was great.

 

[armond]

you like to sound smart but you are missing the point. I was merely pointing out how slow development of this game is. Which is quite ironic considering this game was initially born out of frustration with Oni's slow progress.

Progress is an illusion my child, such a thing is ment to distract form the present. Also indi game devs seem to loose inspiration and passion the more successful they become.

 

[arkopand]

No don't mention pregnant women. You're going to summon... the fetishists.

nevr forget

ez

 

[red1988]

creation game need time here

 

[-Wastrel]

I would argue that the content is already richer and more in depth than RLE - though they are different styles of game so it's not a straight comparison. Oni has more quantity of content, but a lot of that is the same content with different girls - which is perfect for his pure-sandbox style of game since a lot of that is coming down to "I want to do X with my favourite girl". This has more story-based content and character depth, and a generally different art style with a more fully-fledged outfit system (though not yet in sex scenes, though planned once enough is in the art budget). RLE is also more directly in the porn-parody, where this is trying to be more porn-but-in-character. Different things, and I love RLE - but it's a shallow sandbox, this is definitely deeper even in early stages.

My main issue is with the structured story getting new girls introduced and to the point where the players can interact with them is going to be a slog unless there is a jump ahead button which lets you pick things leading up to the next chapter. For instance Storm will not be romanceable until the next chapter if I remember correctly, and with all the story events and work to get through the seasons, even if they introduce 3 girls a chapter it isgoing to span in game years and raises questions like "Where the fuck were you for this entire time?"

Oni with his more limited story by basically saying fuck you I am here now, and a healthy dose of hand waving that I honestly cannot be arsed to care about gets around this easily. When Oni sees a road bump he just drivess over it and keeps on drawing porn.

This game however is way too story driven for that in my opinion, it is a great, but they will have to do something about the progression if they do stick to the year=chapter format.

 

[Shintomi]

I'm looking at this game in a similar way to Lessons in Love. They're creating a visual novel with sandbox elements and repeatable events to raise stats for the characters. With this, there's a much stronger focus on the story than on the Oni style sex sandbox. Jumping ahead from chapter to chapter just so you can sleep with a specific character quicker kinda spits in the face of the devs and the story they are trying to tell here. It's like watching a TV series and jumping ahead to season 4 because that's when an actress you like shows up.

As for the slow dev time; y'all need to learn to be patient. From what I've seen so far, a lot of resources have been put into building the foundation for this game, making it far easier and quicker to add additional content down the road. Definitely a huge improvement on Oni's spaghetti code. Quality takes time, and I love that they've been paying a talented artist rather than using the scum that is AI generation for their artwork.

All in, this is a high quality project that deserves the time and effort that is being put into it. I'm patiently waiting for more updates, and hope you'll all do the same.

 

[harem.king]

My main issue is with the structured story getting new girls introduced and to the point where the players can interact with them is going to be a slog unless there is a jump ahead button which lets you pick things leading up to the next chapter. For instance Storm will not be romanceable until the next chapter if I remember correctly, and with all the story events and work to get through the seasons, even if they introduce 3 girls a chapter it isgoing to span in game years and raises questions like "Where the fuck were you for this entire time?"

Oni with his more limited story by basically saying fuck you I am here now, and a healthy dose of hand waving that I honestly cannot be arsed to care about gets around this easily. When Oni sees a road bump he just drivess over it and keeps on drawing porn.

This game however is way too story driven for that in my opinion, it is a great, but they will have to do something about the progression if they do stick to the year=chapter format.

This game having an actual story is a good thing.
It is what makes it better than rogue-like evolution. which is just porn without a story.

 

[sleepingkirby]

Put it this way: One pregnant woman gives birth to one baby in nine months. You can't just get another 8 women and then get the birth to happen within one month because you've now more resources allocated. This is so self-evidence yet managers will decide that throwing more programmers at a software project (or artists, or money) can half how long it takes and that's been proven decade after decade to be a fallacy.

A little off topic but in my opinion, that's a result of managers not knowing how things, particularly reality (which is why it's important to not just understand the theory of something, but also understand it in practice), works with seeing other people as tools to make number go up. When you get use to a certain amount of abstraction, you tend to reflexively think that everything is a supply and demand problem. I think my favorite example of this was a MIT coursework I was watching on minimax and alpha beta pruning where the professor did some quick math. To brute force all the possible combinations on a chess board, it would take the processing power of the same number of computers as all of the atoms that physicists can calculate in the universe, running 24/7 since around the time of the actual big bang.

But back to mbRjpZLD's complaint, that's just the way it goes. Sometimes, to get things to move faster later on, you need to spend more time in the beginning. Sometimes, you think "I can do something better/faster than that X" and then try it for yourself and find out "Well, no, no I can't. Maybe X was right in how they're doing things." Even if someone else comes along and tries to reproduce that someone has done, the reproduction would be faster initially because you're looking to reproduce the solution that has already dealt with/handled problems that may not be obvious. But as time goes on and the copy is trying to go in its own path, it'll run into other problems that the original won't.

All this is to say that even if one of the original reasons for this game to exist is Oni's speed in releases, given that the game now has a completely different goal and completely different style, its unreasonable to expect updates faster than original because it's pretty much comparing apples and oranges. With that said, I'm not 100% sure if speed of was one of the reasons that this game was started. Maybe ShinyBoots1993 can answer on that. I was always under the impression that one of the original frustrations with RLE to cause the creation of this game was the inability to mod RLE without it breaking on every new iteration due to the constantly changing code and/or bad code. Everyone wants things to be faster, especially the creators/makers of something because working on the same thing day-in and day-out can be exhaust even if you do enjoy it. But it helps no one, and more often than not, hurts progress to complain about speed as that urges shortcuts that, while faster in the short term, will cause problems outweighing the speed advantage in the long time. Which is one of the reasons why triple A games are so bad these days. Wanting things faster has been dubbed many things, crunch, bioware magic, etc. And more often than not, it ends in horrible results. Quality takes time and it's never guaranteed. Thinking otherwise is putting your own selfish desires (which we all have) above reality. And that never ends well for anyone.

 

[ShinyBoots1993]

My main issue is with the structured story getting new girls introduced and to the point where the players can interact with them is going to be a slog unless there is a jump ahead button which lets you pick things leading up to the next chapter.

If you dislike narrative that progresses linearly then this isn't the game for you.

"Where the fuck were you for this entire time?"

Not part of the X-Men yet.

When Oni sees a road bump he just drivess over it and keeps on drawing porn.

The dude is making an entirely different kind of game with a different design philosophy with a different set of things needing to be done.

We haven't hit a roadbump. We're not only on schedule, we've managed to include multiple things in our updates that wouldn't be there if we stook to the road map completely.

This game however is way too story driven for that in my opinion, it is a great, but they will have to do something about the progression if they do stick to the year=chapter format.

Again this is simply not a game you will enjoy if you take issue with our focus on a narrative.

If you want a game where you go to Xavier's school with the sole objective of sleeping with female students then play RLE. It's a good game. We highly recommend it.

As for the slow dev time

Okay allow me to go on a tangent here.

Spoiler: Longish Rant

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I was always under the impression that one of the original frustrations with RLE to cause the creation of this game was the inability to mod RLE without it breaking on every new iteration due to the constantly changing code and/or bad code.

This is true.

However our primary driving goal is wanting to tell a GOOD story and make it sexy.

 

[sleepingkirby]

I genuinely want to know where the hell this idea of "slow dev time" comes from? What is the measure we are using? What game are we comparing to? RLE?

I think some people just expects things to be monthly just because they're use to things being monthly. Subscriptions, bills, paycheck, etc.

 

[darkstel]

It's just that people are used to the fact that many developers postponed the technical part for later so that their project would gain popularity and therefore earn money at an early stage, but such things sooner or later bite in the ass, which has been proven more than once in a number of my favorite games. I dare say in the same RLE focused on the simple collection of a harem, it took years to implement the first three girls. Immediately we have a project that started from the start with the technical part of the implementation, while being played as a full-fledged game. Based on other games, I myself do not really believe in roadmaps, but as a person of logic, I will not indicate "I told you so" before the first of October, this is a banal truism....not that I will be happy with this result, of course, although even so, expanding the initial plans to 0.6 would justify it.