Ren'Py What a Legend! [v0.7.03] [MagicNuts]

[theMickey_]

Spoiler: Off-Topic

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[Bacalu]

True, and the only point I was trying to make was: Ren'Py (code) debugging isn't as easy as this tutorial watching noob is trying to tell us.

Also: can you imagine who many playthroughs it would take to spot these small bugs? Of course, once spotted, you can then tell the coder to fix it, but to spot it in the first place, you have to look at EVERY scene for more than just 2 seconds. You'll have to check the text, you'll have to check the images, the sprites, listen to the music and sound effects -- this could take HOURS just to get through a SINGLE scene (as in "label" when we talk Ren'Py) trying to find all those nasty mistakes.

The youtube thing was to reply to an entirely different topic, it was to prove that the mechanics and techniques used are widely avaible and easy to implement from examples.
And yes you would take some hours to look at each scene on the new update probably about some casual workday, not weeks.

 

[PBS666]

But, but, but, that just doesn't fit with their agenda.
In fact it directly contradicts the assumption behind their "Waaaaah, dev's a liar, milker." claims.
But let's not have a little thing like facts get in the way of their delusions.
They watched a YT vid. They're experts now, don't you know. Despite knowing none of the specifics.

Not only that, but this guy is apparently also a financial consultant, as he "would even ask the patreons to reconsider what they are paying for"
I swear, if Dunning-Kruger had mass, these "experts" would be walking black holes...

 

[hrimthyrs]

The Lana-focused main story update came out after the Myrtle update, and Magicnuts went back and added in ghost eye to the Myrtle content for when people play her story after getting that far in the main story, which is something they could have gotten away with skipping but shows their dedication to the details and quality of the game and shows the scripting in this game is a tad less linear and simple that some would like us believe. Also, speaking as somebody with actual fucking experience in video game QA, they would have had to retest everything, even the no-ghost eye content already in the game. Which would have meant playing through Myrtle's entire story at least twice, paying close attention to all the details, on top of testing all the main story/Lana/Simmone content that they'd just added.

But, sure, this game with thousands of lines of new code every update and 4—6 MB/day of new art with each update and a rigorous attention to detail is totally something you could test and debug in a weekend.

 

[Valath]

The youtube thing was to reply to an entirely different topic, it was to prove that the mechanics and techniques used are widely avaible and easy to implement from examples.
And yes you would take some hours to look at each scene on the new update probably about some casual workday, not weeks.

To a professional developer, the spiel above is -- and I say this in a tone of reluctant admiration -- stunningly full of shit.

Every software project has scope creep. Every single one. Every software project is incredibly complex compared to its apparent complexity, at least by a factor of 20; that size affects state space in a combinatorial fashion, as has been already mentioned. And since all projects trend toward increasing complexity over time, that complexity must be managed.

It is, to make things clear, a problem not remotely comparable to what you'd find in a toy example on YouTube.

That is what we as programmers do: we manage complexity. The problem with games is precisely that they entertain by offering complexity within a system of rules. In order for something to be a game, it requires state management of branching paths, and much like any other tool for writing Interactive Fiction, Ren'py does not have automation for ensuring the integrity of the state tree (whether in the narrative sense or not).

I know that because state-branch management is a Hard Problem. It's nontrivial to solve in the CompSci sense. Entire languages have been written to reduce given aspects of the combinatorial explosion. I have yet to see an indication that Ren'Py even bothers to do more than the bare minimum in that regard.

And testing, of course, is a full-time job by itself. I've been a [C#/C++/whatever's-needed] guy at <$day_job> for close to 10 years at this point. I still loathe product testing and doff my hat at anyone who takes on that work, because it's fucking gruelling, twice over when it's your own stuff you have to sit down and iterate on with a critical eye.

 

[Bacalu]

To a professional developer, the spiel above is -- and I say this in a tone of reluctant admiration -- stunningly full of shit.

Every software project has scope creep. Every single one. Every software project is incredibly complex compared to its apparent complexity, at least by a factor of 20; that size affects state space in a combinatorial fashion, as has been already mentioned. And since all projects trend toward increasing complexity over time, that complexity must be managed.

It is, to make things clear, a problem not remotely comparable to what you'd find in a toy example on YouTube.

That is what we as programmers do: we manage complexity. The problem with games is precisely that they entertain by offering complexity within a system of rules. In order for something to be a game, it requires state management of branching paths, and much like any other tool for writing Interactive Fiction, Ren'py does not have automation for ensuring the integrity of the state tree (whether in the narrative sense or not).

I know that because state-branch management is a Hard Problem. It's nontrivial to solve in the CompSci sense. Entire languages have been written to reduce given aspects of the combinatorial explosion. I have yet to see an indication that Ren'Py even bothers to do more than the bare minimum in that regard.

And testing, of course, is a full-time job by itself. I've been a [C#/C++/whatever's-needed] guy at <$day_job> for close to 10 years at this point. I still loathe product testing and doff my hat at anyone who takes on that work, because it's fucking gruelling, twice over when it's your own stuff you have to sit down and iterate on with a critical eye.

What are you even comparing, this isnt software development.
Debugging in here is simply running the game and watching if each new scene is what is supposed to be and toy around with events to see if there are incompatibilities, which you can debug by simply editing the code and force to changing vairables that shouldnt be more that simple boolean logic. After the opening of the game each character quite literally works in a vacuum only interacting with one or two other main plot characters that need to be in specific places.
And yet again you have here a barrage of VNs who upscale the complexity by a whole lot compared to WaL and dont take even close to the same amount of time to debug.

 

[Bacalu]

The Lana-focused main story update came out after the Myrtle update, and Magicnuts went back and added in ghost eye to the Myrtle content for when people play her story after getting that far in the main story, which is something they could have gotten away with skipping but shows their dedication to the details and quality of the game and shows the scripting in this game is a tad less linear and simple that some would like us believe. Also, speaking as somebody with actual fucking experience in video game QA, they would have had to retest everything, even the no-ghost eye content already in the game. Which would have meant playing through Myrtle's entire story at least twice, paying close attention to all the details, on top of testing all the main story/Lana/Simmone content that they'd just added.

But, sure, this game with thousands of lines of new code every update and 4—6 MB/day of new art with each update and a rigorous attention to detail is totally something you could test and debug in a weekend.

Yeah, 99% of those lines of code are dialog related, which should've been already done and tested once when they first added the code to begin with. Checking if two hoes have already reached game state X and Y to trigger something isnt particularly difficult either. If you are debugging game states you dont need to be re reading the whole plot again.

 

[Tlaero]

Take the few lines moskyx posted earlier: If you change show myrtle bsad msad hfneu1 to show myrtle bsad bsad hfneu1 Ren'Py will not crash, and it results in two (slightly) different outcomes:

I agree with what you're saying, although, in this particular case I wrote code last year to help Pistachio find that error. You're spot on otherwise.

This "debugging" debate we're having amounts to the nay-sayers yelling, "Pistachio isn't a good programmer." The thing is, he'd be the first to admit that. WaL was the first programming that he'd ever done. And, though I haven't looked at the code in a few releases, I did look it over early on. He did a remarkably good job for someone who had never written anything that cared about syntax before.

He also isn't a published fiction writer, but the last update had more text than my first novel.

Something the naysayers should understand is that many of us have had a good deal of interaction with Pistachio and Chestnut and know them decently well. They're hard working, humble, good people. The common refrain in these attacks is that we're stupid for supporting them, but if you can't support your friends, who can you support?

You folks have, what, 20 posts total between you? I've interacted with Pistachio considerably more than that. Why do you think I'm going to believe your sniping over my lived experience?

Tlaero

 

[Valath]

What are you even comparing, this isnt software development.

Definitionally, it is. Ren'Py is gussied-up Python.

Debugging in here is simply running the game and watching if each new scene is what is supposed to be and toy around with events to see if there are incompatibilities, which you can debug by simply editing the code and force to changing vairables that shouldnt be more that simple boolean logic.

That is not a well-formed statement. "Supposed to be" is vague, "incompatibilities" is hand-waving, and as for "simple boolean logic", I think you're confusing implementation details for the reality of state. It doesn't matter if you have a branch or a flag -- the impact on complexity remains. Some of the most absurd bugs I've seen have emerged from spurious gobs of boolean logic.

After the opening of the game each character quite literally works in a vacuum only interacting with one or two other main plot characters that need to be in specific places.

That's a slightly better argument. You still need to take into account all extant details that may impact the interaction, though. And the more room there is in a project -- the simpler it is -- the more these details tend to accrete. Why not? Adding them is so simple.

Look, I understand why you feel this way. But what you're saying is an exaggerated version of what I've literally thought for every project I've been introduced to: "this time it's different. I understand the complexity here, the choices and workflow are obviously deliberately constrained. There's abstraction here that will mitigate most bugs. This time will be better."

It's never turned out that way, even in well-managed projects. I don't know why that's true, I just know that a greenfield (i.e. tightly managed) project attracts complexity the way flies are attracted to shit. If Ren'Py had been constricted, that would have been one thing. But Ren'Py is Python. It's a general purpose computing language, so the surface area for complexity is arbitrarily large.

I recall at one place of work, where we had FORTRAN code from the 1970s driving it. So we're talking heavily optimized toward numeric solutions; it was reasonably quick on systems from 1990. Today, of course, that means near-instant.

So one of the engineers decided that hey, we should add some handy extra functionality, you know, since it would be useful. He implemented that.

And sure, using that functionality would then change some of the numbers, so you had to have checks for that in the forms.

I no longer work there, but last I checked, a simple OnLostFocus in that dialog caused it to grey out for several seconds while the cascading update calls were doing their thing.

It's ridiculous, but it happens. It happens all the time.

And yet again you have here a barrage of VNs who upscale the complexity by a whole lot compared to WaL and dont take even close to the same amount of time to debug.

I think you're attacking the wrong thing, here.

The typical thing we see when Ren'Py authors begin something is that they're, well, beginners. There's little sense in assuming that a foundation written by beginners will have the restraint to support later development in a graceful fashion. We cannot assume a new developer will create a sensible, future-proof architecture. They wouldn't know how.

I'm happy you chose to nuance your statements above. I still think you're confusing what you think something should be with what it is on the ground, and using that to needlessly assume malice or incompetence.

 

[YuuyaTheMagnificent]

So many whiners, white knights, experts etc. maaaan this thread is a fucking gold. thx for making me laugh so hard

 

[AnotherAnon9999]

>Doesn't check thread for 3 months
>Checks into thread to see how update is coming along
>Pages of People whining about a free game taking long to update

Do you have nothing better to do in life? it's Summer, go out swimming, hiking, drink with your buddies at the pub.
Live your life, an update will come eventually. If you don't like the long updates then just don't subscribe to their Patreon (if you are subscribed, I'm not) and forget about the game. Look for another one instead.
Gee people are so entitled nowadays, your life doesn't depend on free porn.

Also stop being envious on how much other people earn, it just poisons your mind.
Be content with what you have and work on yourself, constantly looking at another persons plate won't suddenly fill yours.

 

[taway1531]

Imagine arguing this fervently about a free porn game.

 

[Sthr ▚ nix]

Yep, this thread definitely get the same treatment as Summertime Saga.

 

[whichone]

Do you have nothing better to do in life? it's Summer, go out swimming, hiking, drink with your buddies at the pub.
Live your life, an update will come eventually. If you don't like the long updates then just don't subscribe to their Patreon (if you are subscribed, I'm not) and forget about the game. Look for another one instead.
Gee people are so entitled nowadays, your life doesn't depend on free porn.

Whilst you are completely correct, the problem you've fallen into is the same one I did.
You're trying to use logic and reason to explain it.
Those 2 things are both clearly absent from these sad, entitled users.

I recall at one place of work, where we had FORTRAN code from the 1970s driving it. So we're talking heavily optimized toward numeric solutions; it was reasonably quick on systems from 1990. Today, of course, that means near-instant.

So one of the engineers decided that hey, we should add some handy extra functionality, you know, since it would be useful. He implemented that.

That's the difference, between an experienced professional perspective & that of someone who's watched a YT video and thinks they know how the SDLC operates. lol Didn't even know that Ren'Py is Python, so claims coding in Ren'Py is not software development.
Hope your guy did his relevant RFC & Impact Assessment, before making that change! lol Get fired at my old place for unauthorised Changes, to Dev or Prod environments.
Having worked in an environment where things are controlled to the nth degree, with numerous test phases, where there's an audit trail for every single Configuration Item, we still encountered major delays and post implementation issues.
I doubt very much if magicnuts is working within an ITIL environment, so considerably more scope for issues to arise.

 

[theMickey_]

Nice! What a Legend is among the featured list of games!

 

[storm1051787]

Nice! What a Legend is among the featured list of games!

View attachment 1911210

I'm pretty sure it's been featured for over a year now. It's been on that list since before the myrtle update.

 

[alexismoses]

Nice! What a Legend is among the featured list of games!

View attachment 1911210

why wouldn't it be? one of the best games available on f95zone

 

[theMickey_]

I'm pretty sure it's been featured for over a year now. It's been on that list since before the myrtle update.

At first I thought so as well. But then I haven't seen the game slider in quite a while and I didn't change my settings/preferences, so I thought it might be a new slider. Maybe I'm wrong -- but hey! WaL is (still) a featured game!

 

[JJEX7]

As a student and a normal person who can't code to save my life, I have immense respect for those who create any kind of software (be it games or otherwise). And in my humble opinion, this game is an absolute masterpiece on all counts (coding, art, world building, story, and humour). I sincerely request everyone to support (or continue supporting) Pistachio, Chestnut and all the deliciously named dry-fruits and nuts involved in this project in whatever way you can, and most importantly give these creators the time they need to create unforgettable experiences for their audience. It's the least we can do for them!

 

[Sthr ▚ nix]

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