Ren'Py The Null Hypothesis [v0.7b] [Ron Chon]

[buttfan]

About the whole "having to ask permission during sex" thing, we could solve most of it by having the girls make requests /demands on their own. Hell even take the initiative and make you do the action they want (looking at you Laura).

This is very much desired, and indicated as planned. But as Shiny has pointed out several times, despite appearances to the contrary, this is only the fourth major release of the development version of the game, and it is still early in development.

Ironically despite the apparent level the game is currently at (due to good art and writing) there will appear to be little movement in development of the game as all the planned updates are only system and art updates, no real story additions (except as related to adding new functions), and no new girls. At the rate they are going - and remember I am merely a supporter, I am not on the dev team so this is only my opinion - I wouldn't expect to see Chapter Two before sometime in 2025.

 

[armion82]

This is very much desired, and indicated as planned. But as Shiny has pointed out several times, despite appearances to the contrary, this is only the fourth major release of the development version of the game, and it is still early in development.

Ironically despite the apparent level the game is currently at (due to good art and writing) there will appear to be little movement in development of the game as all the planned updates are only system and art updates, no real story additions (except as related to adding new functions), and no new girls. At the rate they are going - and remember I am merely a supporter, I am not on the dev team so this is only my opinion - I wouldn't expect to see Chapter Two before sometime in 2025.

So you think they will need more than 10 years,maybe even 15 to complete the game?

 

[Crichton]

This is very much desired, and indicated as planned. But as Shiny has pointed out several times, despite appearances to the contrary, this is only the fourth major release of the development version of the game, and it is still early in development.

Ironically despite the apparent level the game is currently at (due to good art and writing) there will appear to be little movement in development of the game as all the planned updates are only system and art updates, no real story additions (except as related to adding new functions), and no new girls. At the rate they are going - and remember I am merely a supporter, I am not on the dev team so this is only my opinion - I wouldn't expect to see Chapter Two before sometime in 2025.

The writing never stopped

The point of these updates is that they're a one time thing. Ron won't need to learn how he wants to animate again. Won't need to recreate the clothe-coloring, the ui, the friendship system, the quirk system. Won't need to redo the artwork to a new style.
The only limiter is the art. That's the bottleneck once all this is done. It took 7 or so months for the 0.2 girls and sex poses. They'll be done redoing it by september at the latest (sooner if budget increases) That's 3 girls done twice + all the new coding.

I'm thinking 3 girls in less than a year. Max 5 more years to get to 15 main girls.

 

[drifter139]

Max 5 more years to get to 15 main girls

I'm okay with this since it means the team is in it for the long haul instead of a short burst

 

[Buttholder]

I can confirm we're still hard at work writing new scenes and content. Personally, I've been writing pretty steadily since about June/July last year, with the odd break while we wait for coding or assets to be done - hell, I just submitted a couple of new bits yesterday, if anyone's interested, and I still have stuff waiting to be added in general. And even then, when we've been waiting, we've been bouncing ideas around or discussing plans for the future, so it's not like we've been resting on our laurels at any point.

To put our cards on the table, right now, the major bottleneck, as mentioned, is art. It'd probably surprise people to find out the number of ideas we have planned, and ready to be written up, just waiting on things like backgrounds for new areas of the school, we've definitely mentioned that in the past. These things will make it into the game one way or another, it's purely a matter of when. It sucks that we're beholden to that, but that's the basic fact of the matter. In addition, the other big reason we're taking so long with this first chapter, once again, is so we can shore everything up for later releases. We won't have to redo all the art assets for Live2D, for example, we won't have to overhaul the friendship mechanics or the sex minigames because they'll all be in place for future updates. In future, unless anything comes up, story and character updates should be more frequent.

As for the long-term timeframe, obviously, I'm not about to give all our long-term plans out, and I'm absolutely not going to make statements like 'Chapter One will be complete by [insert date here]', but we are have definite plans and we're working to get chapter one finished as soon as is possible - it's not going to happen immediately, but it's going to happen, just give us time to work on it. And - once again - remember that we're still in Alpha, we've barely begun in the grand scheme of things.

Past that, we'll burn that bridge when we get to it. More girls means more updates, means more stuff in general, and if we get the support, either via Patreon or word of mouth, we'll be able to get to those quicker. I get how some of you may be frustrated, wanting to know what happens next, but I promise you we are working on it. We want to be the wait between Infinity War and Endgame, not A Dance With Dragons and The Winds of Winter.

Besides, some of the stuff I wish I could tell you about, I know for an absolute goddamn fact, none of you will see coming, and I want to get there just for the reactions alone.

 

[ShinyBoots1993]

I've said we've been in beta more than once but considering we're still introducing core features and systems, I'm gonna backtrack and state that yeah we're still in alpha.

As explained by others, we want to make sure that the core experience if refined. Y'all complaining about grind bugged dating mechanics want us to just move on and throw in more equally bugged girls?

As Crichton said, once Ron figures something out and has it programmed in then we won't have to worry about it in the future. It'd just be plugging in the art and the writing with all the mechanics and systems already there.

With the way that we're handling it, chapters 2 to 5 would be 99% story and content updates because we spent the time to set the framework and core systems up first while letting you guys play around with what we have currently.

 

[buttfan]

So you think they will need more than 10 years,maybe even 15 to complete the game?

No.
The entire point of what they are doing is to get all the functionality in place before they continue, this will actually make for a shorter development cycle. Plus, it allows the art bottleneck to open up a little.

Take the problems that have occurred with the addition of the friendship system, this was added after Chapter 1 was almost finished and has created multiple bugs and unforeseen interactions. Now imagine they added chapter 2 first, they would have more fixes to make, plus when they add another function - and many remain - they would have to go back and redo parts of both chapter 1 and 2, and any other chapters they have done in the meantime each time, adding to the complexity of adding a function, and creating a multitude of bugs each time.

This process is better. It has a longer front end to get all the functions in place, but once they are in place each new chapter can be written with all the functions in place, and this should reduce the bugs as well (there will be bugs, it's programming, all one can do is minimize them). So this method will actually will proceed faster than the haphazard method of shoehorning things in after the fact.

I'm thinking 3 girls in less than a year. Max 5 more years to get to 15 main girls.

This makes sense, and is still probably slowed due to art limitations. With a larger budget I wouldn't be surprised if each subsequent chapter could be done in 6 months.

All the goal of my original statement was meant to do was to set some realistic expectations on what is currently the state of the game - based entirely on what has been said previously on this forum.

 

[sleepingkirby]

Take the problems that have occurred with the addition of the friendship system, thus was added after Chapter 1 was almost finished and has created multiple bugs and unforeseen interactions. Now imagine they added chapter 2 first, they would have more fixes to make, plus when they add another function - and many remain - they would have to go back and redo parts of both chapter 1 and 2, and any other chapters they have done in the meantime each time, adding to the complexity of adding a function, and creating a multitude of bugs each time.

This process is better. It has a longer front end to get all the functions in place, but once they are in place each new chapter can be written with all the functions in place, and this should reduce the bugs as well (there will be bugs, it's programming, all we can do is minimize them). So this method will actually will proceed faster than the other way.

I'm gonna add to this to provide some broader context. The standard for software development these days is called "agile development". In agile development, the goal is to make a "minimum viable product" (usually shortened to MVP). What defines a MVP can differ from company to company, product to product. But generally, it's considered something that brings marketable value to customers. But, as you can imagine, just because something is sell-able, doesn't mean it was built well or will last. Thus, also in agile development is the idea of "technical debt". Ideally, you want no technical debt as you reach a MVP, but often that's not the case considering deadlines, politics, technology, customer/stakeholder pressure, etc. etc. Sometimes it's better to get out that works *for now* than it is to take forever to craft the perfect solution. That something that works for now (and other things like it) is what's called "technical debt". But the trade off to that is that you'll need to go back and fix the *for now* solution to an actually good and solid one. And, while resolving technical debt is absolutely necessary and critical for a long and lasting or even stable product/program/app/whatever, it is considered "not sexy" as the customers and/or stakeholders will see no little no change on their side, making them think that, all this time, the programmers have been slacking off or not doing their jobs. (Apparently, this was a pretty common complaint in the past. Well, as it was taught to me by my professors in college.)
There are horror stories in tech of technical debt. And I do mean horror. As in, someone died. And while someone's death is not the norm, dealing with technical debt is VERY important.

What buttfan is describing here is exactly that. All this might take time and, yes, it might be frustrating to see no new content or gameplay. But if you want a good and lasting game beyond what you see now, it NEEDS to be done.

 

[buttfan]

I work in Healthcare, 'Agile' as practiced is complete ass. It basically ends up getting to the above mentioned Minimal Viable Product, and then straps on some more shit, and then the Powers That Be will want to stop spending any more time or money on it and move onto the next thing to make money. Meaning the software is buggy shit.

Our organization has spent millions and millions on buggy shit. Sometimes it limps along for years - and our people have to keep it working because the vendor doesn't want to spend any more time on it - and sometimes it ends up never working. We had one project from a large corporation that we spent millions on, some of our people had to do the vendor's job for them, and in the end the project was abandoned just before planned go live because it flat out didn't work.

Irony? We had our own in-house product already in place that worked quite well, but the big shots didn't like that it wasn't from a Brand Name, so they wanted to replace it with a Brand Name product... except the Brand Name product was shit, probably because it was directed by someone with a marketing degree who had no idea how software is made, or how healthcare works. I know some people that worked for the company in question, and they indicated that the company fully believed that making software was absolutely no different than making a physical product (for those who aren't in the industry, it is VERY different).

Also, consider how many AAA title games are released as buggy pieces of shit. Some companies make a point of fixing it (CD Project Red and Cyberpunk 2077 come to mind), and others stick a couple band aids on it and walk away (a quite lengthy list). CDPRed admitted that they were under pressure to release and absolutely knew CP2077 wasn't ready, but the money people insisted... and so it was released. This is common.

Meanwhile Larian is completely private and beholden to no one but themselves. One of the developers on Baldur's Gate 3 said that they could go public, and the top people could make more money, but they would absolutely end up making worse games because shareholder profit today is all that matters.

 

[drifter139]

I've said we've been in beta more than once but considering we're still introducing core features and systems, I'm gonna backtrack and state that yeah we're still in alpha.

As explained by others, we want to make sure that the core experience if refined. Y'all complaining about grind bugged dating mechanics want us to just move on and throw in more equally bugged girls?

As Crichton said, once Ron figures something out and has it programmed in then we won't have to worry about it in the future. It'd just be plugging in the art and the writing with all the mechanics and systems already there.

With the way that we're handling it, chapters 2 to 5 would be 99% story and content updates because we spent the time to set the framework and core systems up first while letting you guys play around with what we have currently.

given how the game is right now and what you guys intend to do, is at least 1 sequel game planned and if so, what kind of time skip would it be between the 2 games?

 

[SolSpell]

given how the game is right now and what you guys intend to do, is at least 1 sequel game planned and if so, what kind of time skip would it be between the 2 games?

The game is in alpha and we're already talking about sequels

 

[Spider-Venom]

The game is in alpha and we're already talking about sequels

ooh! ooh! ooh! I want She-Hulk, Ava Ayala and She-Venom in the sequel!

 

[sleepingkirby]

I work in Healthcare, 'Agile' as practiced is complete ass. It basically ends up getting to the above mentioned Minimal Viable Product, and then straps on some more shit, and then the Powers That Be will want to stop spending any more time or money on it and move onto the next thing to make money. Meaning the software is buggy shit.

Oh, absolutely. Agile basically boils down to "Hey programmers, figure out what we want AND how to do our jobs, for us." As rigid as waterfall is, it puts doesn't put the power of how something is built into the hands of people who have more selfish vested interest than making sure something works.

Our organization has spent millions and millions on buggy shit. Sometimes it limps along for years - and our people have to keep it working because the vendor doesn't want to spend any more time on it - and sometimes it ends up never working. We had one project from a large corporation that we spent millions on, some of our people had to do the vendor's job for them, and in the end the project was abandoned just before planned go live because it flat out didn't work.

I haven't had the same experience, but I've heard stories. Some from actual professors. So, yeah, can confirm.

Irony? We had our own in-house product already in place that worked quite well, but the big shots didn't like that it wasn't from a Brand Name, so they wanted to replace it with a Brand Name product... except the Brand Name product was shit, probably because it was directed by someone with a marketing degree who had no idea how software is made, or how healthcare works. I know some people that worked for the company in question, and they indicated that the company fully believed that making software was absolutely no different than making a physical product (for those who aren't in the industry, it is VERY different).

Also, consider how many AAA title games are released as buggy pieces of shit. Some companies make a point of fixing it (CD Project Red and Cyberpunk 2077 come to mind), and others stick a couple band aids on it and walk away (a quite lengthy list). CDPRed admitted that they were under pressure to release and absolutely knew CP2077 wasn't ready, but the money people insisted... and so it was released. This is common.

Meanwhile Larian is completely private and beholden to no one but themselves. One of the developers on Baldur's Gate 3 said that they could go public, and the top people could make more money, but they would absolutely end up making worse games because shareholder profit today is all that matters.

Absolutely agreed on all of that. My point is, there are some valid points and concerns to the whole agile development and one of them is "technical debt". Which, I'm sure, existed prior to agile development came along and gave a name to it. But this is probably the most common name for it now.

 

[Andy211]

game is really good and i'm waiting for dating allowance bugfix.. Jean is cute and i don't want to disappoint her

 

[Crichton]

The game is in alpha and we're already talking about sequels

In that team members have downtime to shoot the shit, outline ideas, adapt comic stories, whatever.

 

[Evil13]

The game is in alpha and we're already talking about sequels

I mean, do you know how much time goes into preplanning major games?

 

[mypossiblepasts]

Oh, one more thing came to my mind.
I assume it is a placeholder for some future features, but some variance would be enjoyed in the coming back from date part.
It's kinda weird to skip through the outside of school part.
And while we are at dates - I really like how you're not always invited to the room. Those small details are what pushes this game to the league above others.

 

[drifter139]

so in a previous post, I asked about a sequel to this game. I should clarify that I had read in earlier posts that there might be a sequel after this game is done and does not mean it will happen. that being said, this is just me asking and should not be seen as confirmed

 

[Thwip!]

The game is in alpha and we're already talking about sequels

Sequels?! I'm surprised no one has asked for a Null Hypothesis MMO!
...or an Avengers expansion DLC!
...or a unified Marvel Dating-Sim Universe!

 

[buttfan]

Oh, absolutely. Agile basically boils down to "Hey programmers, figure out what we want AND how to do our jobs, for us." As rigid as waterfall is, it puts doesn't put the power of how something is built into the hands of people who have more selfish vested interest than making sure something works.

I love when the users/ customers have no idea what they want, so just tell us to make a thing that does vague stuff, and walk away. And then bitch and moan when the result isn't what they want - which they still don't actually know what is, but they are sure it isn't what they got.

Or if they do tell you what they want, they keep changing their minds, or adding to it (the ever wonderful scope creep). And then bitch and whine when what they get isn't what they want... but is what they asked for.

I spent 4 (or was it 5?) years of my life trying desperately to make a piece of shit system with a rigid 'database' (aka: a bunch of flat text files) talk to an actual database. To the surprise of myself and several others, I actually got it to work (mostly...), even with their scope creep. And then at almost literally the last minute - I was actually ready to move the thing live - they decide that they aren't going to use that software any more and put the project on hold (don't know why they claimed it was hold as opposed to cancelled, I knew it was dead).
I've been going through the motions and little more ever since, just waiting for my retirement in six months (early retirement).