VN Ren'Py Underboss Life [v0.1] [ERANFER]

[sisco1986]

the mc and Marcelinka look really "angular" like both of them got the same botched plastic surgery, sunken cheeks and extremely pointy chin, both of their faces look line an inverted pyramid

 

[Bithy21]

good to see one of my goats back

 

[wiseold6996]

I wonder what the dev meant by the harem?

 

[Mookys]

That sounds interesting. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Avaron1974]

Did not mention if incest was plannned or not planned.

What incest?

He only has a dad.

 

[pemoj]

Why build a phone interface from scratch? On Itch.io, there are several functional and finished phone systems, some of which are quite complete. For example:

You must be registered to see the links

On Itch.io (and other places too) there are some other telephone interfaces, some simpler, some more complex. In addition to individual chats and many other things, such as image and video galleries, music rooms...

 

[Crosaith.]

Just started and uh... the flavour pack seems unusual af. Those are just side characters with a bit of content right?

Edit - Wow... that was surprisingly good dude. Might be the best MC I've seen in a good while looks & personality wise. It's so refreshing to see a protag that isn't the usual dumb virtuous doormat archetype. Wish there was more like this. Della & Mar seem great. I don't even care if I don't like flavour girls anymore lol. Happy with either of those as is.

 

[Calz]

Android porters where you at.

 

[ukalias]

Really surprised to see this game being alive. Played the original what feels like 4-5 years ago lol

 

[JJJ84]

What incest?

He only has a dad.

Most likely in default mode of tag/kink people may ask, especially if they just look at the thread's tags and haven't actually played the game yet.

View attachment 5330315
Why build a phone interface from scratch? On Itch.io, there are several functional and finished phone systems, some of which are quite complete. For example:

You must be registered to see the links

On Itch.io (and other places too) there are some other telephone interfaces, some simpler, some more complex. In addition to individual chats and many other things, such as image and video galleries, music rooms...

That may be beneficial for Eranfer in short term, but since starting this remake with HS2 he's been learning a lot of new things with coding, graphics etc etc.
So building it from scratch will likely be more beneficial for him in the long run given he would find out for himself what works & what doesn't (and get more nitty gritty aspects knowledge with the phone mechanics).

 

[SpyderArachnid]

Honestly, this was pretty good. I never played the original, so can't compare it. So, I'm looking at this through fresh eyes. And I enjoyed it. Seems intriguing and has an interesting setup. Looking forward to how this progresses. Best of luck with it and thanks.

 

[Black Orchid]

the previews look good enough but a grand total of ~2800 of renders in 6 years (previous version included) is telling enough about how this one is going to end up (abandoned).

 

[Zirael Q]

Promising game, took it to my watchlist

 

[srfsmrf_]

All images are rendered in 4K PNG and compressed into 1080p WEBP. Animations are rendered in 1080p WEBM at 60FPS (I’ll try higher FPS later).

For images you may want to consider AVIF. JXL would arguably be better, but alas, (still) no official Ren'Py support.

You don't think 60fps is more than enough? Higher seems overkill to me, and one thing that you might want to consider is that Ren'Py's video playback performance is far from stellar, and doesn't support HW decoding.

Older / lower spec systems may struggle with 60fps already (esp. AV1). Between that and VP8/9, VP8 is least demanding on the CPU. Your v0.1 60fps VP8 vids seem to do (relatively) okay on my potato, still it's consuming significantly more CPU than when played in a dedicated media player.

 

[as22]

For images you may want to consider AVIF.

You don't think 60fps is more than enough? Higher seems overkill to me, and one thing that you might want to consider is that Ren'Py's video playback performance is far from stellar, and doesn't support HW decoding.

Older / lower spec systems may struggle with 60fps already (esp. AV1). Between that and VP8/9, VP8 is least demanding on the CPU. Your v0.1 60fps VP8 vids seem to do (relatively) okay on my potato, still it's consuming significantly more CPU than when played in a dedicated media player.

What do the most popular games on here use?

 

[GrannyJuices]

Been waiting for the revamp for years, so happy to see you back man. Game looks great so far, looking forward to the next update ^^

 

[pothb]

Eh.... I can't say I personally liked it all that much. Maybe it's because I really really hate the teenage angst, the "omg I hate daddy." He gave everything I want but I feel empty. I can only guess, you'll go into more to make it feel justified, but the little that's there just makes the MC seems childish and stupid.

It's been ages since I've played the original, but I felt the lighter feel of it was better.

Also, if you want to go towards the darker tone as it seems you are planning to do. Probably best not to have that "Because I love you, baka" line in there, it's feels very dissonant to the theme and current situation. Basically a guy going bat crazy screaming about how he was raped in prison or something, then a turns around and puts a hand over his mouths and go, "oops, teehee."

For the character design that I mentioned before, it looked better than I previously thought, though I still think he looks like he went through a couple of plastic surgery. Not as bad as I was thinking before.

 

[Avaron1974]

He gave everything I want but I feel empty.

Then you skipped most of the dialogue.

 

[JJJ84]

If you say so... What I see is that this developer has a 6-YEAR delay in the development of his game. At first, I thought it was the first release, especially considering the very high graphical quality of the game, and overall, the great quality of the game. I was surprised to see that the first update was from 2019.
This developer is falling into all the mistakes that make games fail: an HS2 virtuoso who wastes a huge amount of time rendering at the highest possible image quality, remakes, reboots, an overly optimistic roadmap, stopping development once again to redo the images, menus, and code...
The developer should be earning back the trust of his former players. Instead, it seems he has learned nothing in six years. Another year will pass, and one way or another, either the amount of content will be small or he’ll simply fail to meet his own roadmap. In both cases, the developer will fail to deliver on the promises made to his followers. But if the fanboys are happy, I won't be the one to take away their happiness.

Well, I didn't expect that long of a response to that one reply I made (so I'll respond in kind lol).

I mean, I'm stating this given you're putting huge emphasis on the time period of the delay (putting it in capitals); he stated his reasons for long absence on his patreon (if you haven't check them out given all his patreon posts are public).
It's really up to you (and everyone else individually) whether you/they wish to put faith in him again.

As for the remakes and the roadmap and meeting them?
Well, only time will tell.
But I'm willing to give Eranfer at least a bit of leeway & benefit of the doubt given this is his first time making a game with HS2. He's learning as he's making the game so no doubt there will be some mistakes he makes along the way; which he will correct as he goes along.

With the whole wasting huge time on high quality renders, well I wouldn't know. You'd need to ask Eranfer himself as to how long he spends on the renders lol.
But with remake/reboot, he stated before that he was unsatisfied with the OG version's storyline and made huge restructuring in terms of plot and its tone.
Given the story is already getting changed substantially, in my opinion, it makes sense that he's giving it a visual remake as well - that is unless he decided to stick with the HS1 (which he didn't).

And sure, while I personally think both the dark tone of the narrative and look of the characters have improved a lot in the remake (and some others agree on that opinion), there are also people who are not fans and prefer the more light hearted tone of the OG version and the HS1 looks.
So in the end, it's all gonna come down to different strokes for different folks.

For myself, I never really liked (and still don't) when devs take shortcuts.
Especially if the dev is still learning like in Eranfer's case.

Him buying a phone build from itch.io may have the current short term advantage of having a system right away, but also comes with the disadvantage of him not learning anything in terms of mechanics and how to build it.
And that knowledge he gets from it will last for many years for him, not just for this game and his possible future games (if he reaches that point).
Sorta similar logic to "Give a man a fish, it feeds him for a day. Teach a man to fish, & you feed him a lifetime." lol


Sure, people may call me fanboy for this if they want; but I'd rather see not just Eranfer but all devs of games that I play improve their skills instead of taking shortcuts even if it takes a bit longer.
That I see as much better alternative rather than just churning out updates faster like some factory assembly, with no improvements on the dev him/herself.

And frankly, what really defines "earning trust back" anyway?
I define it as consistent updates (and of course, not abandoning the game), yet not necessarily fast updates like some may be expecting (like an episode every 2 ~ 3 months or something), especially considering all I said above.
Yet, others may define earning trust back as "super fast updates to the game" and will be too impatient for the roadmap Eranfer has set up.

But as I said, the definition will differ with each individual, and folks may stick around or leave depending on the mindset/preferences.

It is what it is.

 

[ZennyZan]

This is pretty damn good