Ren'Py Abandoned What a Legend! [v0.6.04] [MagicNuts]

[destroyerofassholes]

Devs just announced the plan for 0.7 on Patreon:

1. First round of polish done by the end of the first week of October (i.e. next week)
2. Content and polish done by the first week of November. Game sent out to external testers.
3. Release during the final week of November.

Hahahahahah

2 more months for the last 1 percent, boys. They're legit taking the piss

 

[coleb1555]

Seeing as i am usually just lurking around in here, this seems like a good time to actually throw in my 2 cents and make my own post.

It seems that most posts are rather one-sided in their perspective, so i will try to see things from both sides.
As far as i remember i first backed the Magic Nuts patreon around winter 2021/2022. Not too sure, but the first version i played was 0.5 (1st Main story update), released Sep. 2021. I initially backed at the Friend tier, which i upgraded to Close Friend after completing my first run. I subscribed till July when 0.6 (Rose update) was released and where i upgraded to Best Friend tier, in order to maximize voting power. I remained at Best Friend tier for a few months, then dropped back down to Close Friend, having no need of the voting power, but still wanting to back a great and rather unique AVN.

At this point in time we are at late 2022. This is when things really slowed down and after, hmmm, maybe 8 months or something like that, i stopped backing due to the lack of progress. Still kept tabs on the developement because i liked what i had played so far, but it became increasingly demotivating as time went on.

Here are the release dates and dev-time, just to make things convenient for whoever reads this behemoth of a post.
0.2 : June 28. 2020
0.3 : September 20. 2020 (apx. 3 months)
0.4 : February 13. 2021 (apx. 4,5 months)
0.5 : September 24. 2021 (apx. 7 months)
0.6 : July 30. 2022 (apx. 10 months)
0.7 : Reasonable guess is mid November. (2 years and 3-4 months)

OK, with that out of the way, the positives.
- WAL! was never ever going to be in the camp of AVN's with a good pace of developement. The high quality hand drawn 2D art with plenty of clothing and posing variations was always going to be in the way of fast developement. Even at full and nearly full effeciency WAL! was never gonna be able to keep up with the average DAZ/KK/HS developer.
- That said, before they started work on version 0.7, the update rate was reasonable. Sure, 0.6 with its 10 month developement is where things usually starts getting sketchy with AVN's. But i can tell you the content was great and there was a good amount of new locations that all needed new art assets.
- The excuses the Nuts have given are valid, to an extend. First and foremost, a second child. The first 6-12 months of any childs life is especially taxing for all parents. To keep things simple, lets just make the assumption that the Nuts productivity was reduced by 50% for 8 months. This is essentially their way of taking maternity/paternity leave as self-employed people.
On top of that, one of them had some kind of issue with a bone fracture that hadn't healed properly and needed some fairly extensive surgery. And after that, some time to recover, likely a few months. And since this surgery business happened around the same time as the childs first months, i wouldn't be surprised if they had at least 1 month with basically no work done.
Lets say these 2 factors averages out at 50% productivity for a full year. Even then, it will take some time to get back to 100%, a toddler is only slightly less of a burden than an infant.
- 0.7 might in fact turn out to have more and/or better quality content than 0.6. But honestly i doubt it.

The negatives.
Ok, so based on the above, you might get the impression that i consider the devtime of 2,3 years fully justified. I don't.
The number of tasks keeps increasing in tiny amounts with almost every progress update and this has been the case for at least half a year. This period of time could fittingly be called Polish-hell. Some of you are probably familiar with the Miyamoto quote: "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad". Most of us can easily name at least 1 AAA game that could have been far better with just a few more months spent in developement. The rushing of AAA titles became common in the '10s and for this reason it is a lesson that many in the game industry could benefit from. Few studious have.
As for the AVN sphere, i have slowly gotten the impression that this quote is being taken too far, to the point that its getting destructive and not constructive. I think there is a large number of AVN's who finds themselves stuck in a bubble of yes-men, insulating them from trolls but also valid critics. Some of these AVN developers are straight up bad at planning things from the beginning. Some get lazy and complecent at a lack of scrutiny. Then there's the greedy ones, the real milkers who realize they can legally scam people out of their money and embraces the art of delaying and stretching developement for profit.

I think the Nuts belong in a forth more benevolent group. Broadly speaking i consider them "unrestrained perfectionists". If you read through a number of their Patreon posts you quickly realize that they care a lot about fixing even minor percieved flaws in already completed content. And this is likely why we have had this polish-hell since March. They keep finding things that juuuuuust has to be fixed, even if the fixes barely increases the overall quality. This is likely what will make or break WAL! in the long run. They have to rein in their perfectionism before it eats them up from inside.

Going forward.
Well, i will resubsribe in order to get voting for when the focus of 0.9 is to be decided.
I will play 0.7. Actually, i will play the entire thing from beginning to end, when i get around to it.
I will judge if the devtime minus the valid excuses is fair, in relation to released content.
I will unsub most of the time until 0.8 is released. If devtime goes back down to 7-10 months, they will regain my trust and i will sub most of the time.

Incredibly based take and write up. Based off of my past interactions with WAL! as a patron and a fan (6 months total as patron, and haven't been since 2022), calling them "unrestrained perfectionists" is incredibly accurate. And having a second child I would argue would put even a larger load on them for more than 12 months. I can only hope, after this update, they can buckle down and improve their turn around, or else they may face for even more severe backlash (considering Gomira doesn't seem to be too popular by the non-paying users)

 

[DemiMaximoff]

Incredibly based take and write up. Based off of my past interactions with WAL! as a patron and a fan (6 months total as patron, and haven't been since 2022), calling them "unrestrained perfectionists" is incredibly accurate. And having a second child I would argue would put even a larger load on them for more than 12 months. I can only hope, after this update, they can buckle down and improve their turn around, or else they may face for even more severe backlash (considering Gomira doesn't seem to be too popular by the non-paying users)

I believe they'll face nothing. There's still too much interest. Every one of us who come here everyday to bash them are people eagerly waiting to play the game. If this forum starts to lose activity, that's when I'll consider that they have faced any actual consequence of taking too long.

 

[CreepyCannibal]

Kind of forgot this existed until yesterday, but I really enjoyed it when I played it over a year ago. I'm just surprised it's still (supposedly) going. Looking forward to playing the next update sometime in early to mid 2025!

 

[bigdickwaterland]

The game is great, no doubt. But, there is always a but. First of all, let's be honest, there is no place for excuses here. Every second developer with a more or less good plot, renderings or hand-drawn graphics, after 3-4 relatively fast updates, they start pulling the cat by the balls, coming up with excuses, then they move 70 times, then they get sick 30 times a year, then they don't like some detail in one render and decide to remove it before release, etc. Secondly, in fact, developers abuse the trust of patrons. This version, even with the birth of a child, cannot take 3 years of development in any way. He's obviously not the only one making the game. I believe there is a team of at least 5 people there. It is enough to communicate with the community in an honest language, and not just now we will release it, oh, you know, it takes another 4 years to polish, it's funny and bitter at the same time. I like the game, but I don't like this behavior of the developer, and yes, I supported this game for 2 years. Now I've stopped doing it, I don't see any progress, the money is going nowhere. And this is a trend among other developers. I think if you are on the path of developing such games, be conscientious and do everything right. But alas, the temptation to deceive is great, but the patrons are to blame, they do not demand, although in some games they begin to see clearly and demand, but these are still crumbs in a large pit of milkers.

 

[InvisibleUser007]

Isn't there 0.7 already? I mean I saw that on their website.

 

[Kirel]

Isn't there 0.7 already? I mean I saw that on their website.

No, the current version is 0.6.04. 0.7 is planned to come out the last week of November.

 

[ProfN42]

...
But of course, no Idea. I also wonder how there kids will look at it, when they are between 10-15 years old. At one moment they will find out what there parents have been up to...

So basically around the time of 0.9 then?

The 0.8 update will be the real test for them: if they manage to release it within a reasonably quick timeframe and everything comes back to what it was before 0.7, there would be no harm done; if they claim they keep facing unexpected real-life issues and delaying the update, I'll be the first one leaving this thread to rotten.

View attachment 4036852

I wonder how long it'll take to go to other parts of the map, the far right island the bottom right desert village look really cool

Pirate modders will have to do it. Remember, we have seen two screens of Cin Town and a small fraction of ONE city, and it sounds like they'll be wrapping up around 0.9 or 1.0. The map is beautiful, the map is intriguing, the map was never going to be fully explored. They simply & clearly do not have the time and manpower to do so.

Game went from a porn parody game to a parody of a game. I don't understand how people keep supporting this but then i remember there are people that still pre-order Ubisoft games so i guess it all makes sense.

savage

btw don't forget you can preorder Assassins Creed: Whocares for $100 with the gold edition special mount and season pass that might have one DLC and another cosmetic if you're lucky! And no story! Plus extra crunchy launch bugs

Damn, I wish someone would continue this game.

modders. You could even become one, learning Ren'Py is way easier than learning to draw. Finding a friend who'll help you draw for a porn game is the hardest part...

...
- The excuses the Nuts have given are valid, to an extend. First and foremost, a second child. The first 6-12 months of any childs life is especially taxing for all parents. To keep things simple, lets just make the assumption that the Nuts productivity was reduced by 50% for 8 months. This is essentially their way of taking maternity/paternity leave as self-employed people.
On top of that, one of them had some kind of issue with a bone fracture that hadn't healed properly and needed some fairly extensive surgery. And after that, some time to recover, likely a few months. And since this surgery business happened around the same time as the childs first months, i wouldn't be surprised if they had at least 1 month with basically no work done.

Here is where I have to disagree, and this is where their desire for artistic control ran into their commitment to fulfilling promises. When Chestnut was already at half power due to the baby and Pistachio got put out of commission by health issues, was the time to either hire someone or suspend the Patreon and admit they needed to take a break from development. Instead they chose the third option, halfass the effort but continue to take full payment. I get that they don't want to hire people on, become managers, and have to coordinate a product with consistent quality. But they were essentially taking people's money, and those payers saw the Nuts as having made a commitment to the task.

Some of you are probably familiar with the Miyamoto quote: "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad". Most of us can easily name at least 1 AAA game that could have been far better with just a few more months spent in developement. The rushing of AAA titles became common in the '10s and for this reason it is a lesson that many in the game industry could benefit from. Few studious have.

I would say this doesn't exactly apply. It's way easier to dig back into a Ren'Py game and fix a bug or spruce up a lackluster CG scene, than it would have been for CDPR to dig into Cyberpunk 2077's code and undo all its failings a month or two after its embarrassing fart of a launch. Big AAA games are complex, tracking down and fixing bugs is challenging and likely to introduce new bugs if you aren't careful. WAL is... not that. You could definitely rush it some and then fix your boo-boos later.

I think the Nuts belong in a forth more benevolent group. Broadly speaking i consider them "unrestrained perfectionists". If you read through a number of their Patreon posts you quickly realize that they care a lot about fixing even minor percieved flaws in already completed content. And this is likely why we have had this polish-hell since March. They keep finding things that juuuuuust has to be fixed, even if the fixes barely increases the overall quality. This is likely what will make or break WAL! in the long run. They have to rein in their perfectionism before it eats them up from inside.

Best and clearest criticism I've ever read in this thread. Have to agree, I don't think they're intentionally milking. I think they're perfectionists who maybe don't feel a super strong ethical compunction to be producing for every day patrons are paying. It's a bit morally lax but there's no intentional fraud in it.

Devs just announced the plan for 0.7 on Patreon:

1. First round of polish done by the end of the first week of October (i.e. next week)
2. Content and polish done by the first week of November. Game sent out to external testers.
3. Release during the final week of November.

Nah. January soonest. I simply do not believe.

 

[ExoticManticore]

wow I genuinely believed it will be September lol but I guess 1% progress works differently here like Interstellar time dilation - these devs must be working on another planet istg

 

[Jarcar]

wow I genuinely believed it will be September lol but I guess 1% progress works differently here like Interstellar time dilation - these devs must be working on another planet istg

Yeah, I am so old that I remember that during their last update it was the same thing. It took them few feeks to finish last 1% and like one or two extra weeks to finish update even when there was 100%.

Can someone remind me if this is their main income? I believe that at the beginning they were working something else and it was like secondary project to both of them, not sure how does it work right now.

 

[Kirel]

Yeah, I am so old that I remember that during their last update it was the same thing. It took them few feeks to finish last 1% and like one or two extra weeks to finish update even when there was 100%.

Can someone remind me if this is their main income? I believe that at the beginning they were working something else and it was like secondary project to both of them, not sure how does it work right now.

Yes, this is their main income. They both work full-time on the game.

 

[The_Ismand]

Here is where I have to disagree, and this is where their desire for artistic control ran into their commitment to fulfilling promises. When Chestnut was already at half power due to the baby and Pistachio got put out of commission by health issues, was the time to either hire someone or suspend the Patreon and admit they needed to take a break from development. Instead they chose the third option, halfass the effort but continue to take full payment. I get that they don't want to hire people on, become managers, and have to coordinate a product with consistent quality. But they were essentially taking people's money, and those payers saw the Nuts as having made a commitment to the task.

Right, i actually agree with this. I simply didn't specify that it was only the temporal delay that i considered justified. The Nuts arguably should have paused the patreon for a few months at least. Or maybe they could have cut the subscribtion tier prices in half for a year. Taking full price for half the work for more than a year is not a good look.

Also, the Miyamoto quote was never about directly comparing big league video games with visual novels.
I was just making the point that many AVN creators might have seen the quote in the video game sphere and started abusing it themselves. The "Better late than buggy/slightly worse" excuse have become a kneejerk reaction for many developers.

 

[TheHighSpire]

It's sad to see this game abandoned.

 

[jahall]

It's sad to see this game abandoned.

I'm guessing you haven't been following the posts here. The devs are still working on the game, but it's been long enough since the last update to meet F95's criterion for "abandoned". But the devs have just announced that they plan to have the next update out in November.

 

[DanteRed]

I'll pitch in my 2 cents about the status of this game. Like many, I too am annoyed at the long development time and what some days feels like a BS progress bar.

So here is how I see things. They had some pretty good excuses (a second child and a surgery, a few months after each other) and I honestly believe that they didn't work on the game for a few months or if they did, it was minimal. Now, I can understand why that would stall the progress ( a child in your life is no small feat, it requires constant attention). If they should have paused their page during that time is a different discussion.

Now, they promised that the next update will be coming faster since they managed to stabilize things in their lives. I guess we shall see how long it takes for the next update in order to judge if they are milking the game or not. Since the next girl is Holly and she already has a lot of content in the game, not to mention her quest is already started, I except it to take a few months (say 6 or 7) at most. If it takes longer than that, I wish the devs good luck because I sure as shit will never donate a buck for their game.

 

[BeenThroughHell]

Yey

 

[walker188]

I'll pitch in my 2 cents about the status of this game. Like many, I too am annoyed at the long development time and what some days feels like a BS progress bar.

So here is how I see things. They had some pretty good excuses (a second child and a surgery, a few months after each other) and I honestly believe that they didn't work on the game for a few months or if they did, it was minimal. Now, I can understand why that would stall the progress ( a child in your life is no small feat, it requires constant attention). If they should have paused their page during that time is a different discussion.

Now, they promised that the next update will be coming faster since they managed to stabilize things in their lives. I guess we shall see how long it takes for the next update in order to judge if they are milking the game or not. Since the next girl is Holly and she already has a lot of content in the game, not to mention her quest is already started, I except it to take a few months (say 6 or 7) at most. If it takes longer than that, I wish the devs good luck because I sure as shit will never donate a buck for their game.

For most of us, the delay isn't the main issue. It's the obvious lies.

They have CLEARLY not been working on the game, but telling us otherwise. It's one thing to pause a project and they could have either; A paused Patreon payments, or B explained the need the income and let supporters make their own decisions. They CHOSE to do neither.

Further, I've only seen one or two developers who slow down a project to this extend and then step back up to a reasonable dev cycle. And both of them were extremely honest, transparent and open with their processes. Meanwhile there's so many stories like theirs among developers milking dead projects that it is killing the entire genre/industry.

I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I won't be. And certainly not by these two.

 

[Gregor909]

I'm guessing you haven't been following the posts here. The devs are still working on the game, but it's been long enough since the last update to meet F95's criterion for "abandoned". But the devs have just announced that they plan to have the next update out in November.

22 or 23 centuries? what is most surprising is that it will be a hotfix with text correction and a couple of phrases) or shit, instead of chocolate. with which they will smear all those who supported them

 

[moskyx]

For most of us, the delay isn't the main issue. It's the obvious lies.

They have CLEARLY not been working on the game, but telling us otherwise. It's one thing to pause a project and they could have either; A paused Patreon payments, or B explained the need the income and let supporters make their own decisions. They CHOSE to do neither.

But they chose B. The only reason we know about the newborn, the surgeries, the lesser time devoted to development, the slower pace of that development and so on is because devs openly and immediately told their patrons so that they could make their own decisions. Not to mention they have been refunding those who contacted them because they were unhappy with the update's slow progress. All in all, they've taken a roughly 20-25% cut on their monthly family income, something we know because, again, they openly show their income on their Patreon page so that patrons can make their own decisions. Then it's every patron's prerrogative (not) to make the same decisions you'd have made if in their shoes.

 

[Gregor909]

But they chose B. The only reason we know about the newborn, the surgeries, the lesser time devoted to development, the slower pace of that development and so on is because devs openly and immediately told their patrons so that they could make their own decisions. Not to mention they have been refunding those who contacted them because they were unhappy with the update's slow progress. All in all, they've taken a roughly 20-25% cut on their monthly family income, something we know because, again, they openly show their income on their Patreon page so that patrons can make their own decisions. Then it's every patron's prerrogative (not) to make the same decisions you'd have made if in their shoes.

more details. and where does it say that this is true? come up with any excuse, such as a broken arm or family circumstances adding a couple of drawn photos, congratulations, you’ve come up with a good excuse, any judge will be on your side