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

[Xupuzulla]

Are they really doing new drawing now?
A RENPY GAME BTW!!!!

 

[Evangelion-01]

Erm... Doing new drawings has always been a part of the polishing work. And yes, it's still hard to be any more transparent than these devs. They show how much they are earning, they show how much work they've done every day, and they say what they'll be focusing next on a weekly basis. As always, not believing them doesn't mean they are lying.

For those claiming that they are taking these months of 'polishing' to do all the work they didn't do in the past, what would be the point of including this work under the 'edit' tag? It's actually counterproductive. They could just keep adding art or writing tasks as they go (as they are doing now adding new edit tasks), keeping the progress on the tracker's 'content' bars below 100%, and they'd be happier. Because once those bars reached 100%, people just assumed the update was around the corner (even though devs warned it would take more time than in previous updates), so every time the editing bar doesn't advance toward completion people feel even more frustrated because they now have higher expectations than before. Which can't be positive in any way for devs. No one in their sane mind is going to subscribe after 2 years since the last update, no matter how close the new update is claimed to be, and those still subscribed who were considering dropping their support won't feel exactly reassured by this extra long polishing phase. You can say that those in doubt may have unsubscribed for sure if the content bars weren't at 100% already, but if they were in doubt in April, trusted devs once more because they said they were polishing it, and now they see that 3 months later they are still polishing it, not only they'd unsubscribe anyway: chances are they wouldn't be coming back ever again because they'd do feel cheated even if they aren't. Because it's obvious that this long phase raises this kind of suspicion about devs doing their homework late and lying about it, which only makes them look worse in the eyes of potential subscribers even if it isn't actually true.

So why allow that when they could just admit they are still in the content creation phase, where people could only accuse them of being slow or lazy? Devs apparently never lied before, so why start now, and like this? Seriously, this theory is not very consistent when you actually think about it. Considering how their work on previous updates went, it seems more likely that devs have actually completed an alpha version they are not very happy with and they are now vastly improving it, and that's exactly what they are communicating. As always, feel free to not believe them, but this won't mean you are right.

Not trying to jump any band wagon... but they called the Update a site Character Update and now you say they said it would be the biggest Update as of yet?
Marely going by logic a site character shouldn't have more story than an actual main girl

 

[moskyx]

Not trying to jump any band wagon... but they called the Update a site Character Update and now you say they said it would be the biggest Update as of yet?
Marely going by logic a site character shouldn't have more story than an actual main girl

See, that's a legit point. Even more in this case, because when they actually started the development they knew they were going to have a baby soon and could have foreseen it was going to heavily impact their work (it was not their first child), so maybe it wasn't the right time for such an ambitious update as they originally envisioned for Gomira. It's true patrons voted for her at the start of 0.6 update though, and devs weren't expecting a baby back then, but looking back they should've toned things down a bit, at least.

 

[Xupuzulla]

See, that's a legit point. Even more in this case, because when they actually started the development they knew they were going to have a baby soon and could have foreseen it was going to heavily impact their work (it was not their first child), so maybe it wasn't the right time for such an ambitious update as they originally envisioned for Gomira. It's true patrons voted for her at the start of 0.6 update though, and devs weren't expecting a baby back then, but looking back they should've toned things down a bit, at least.

WOW this is the closest we are going to get with this guy almost admitting the devs fucked up and the Gomira big update was a terrible idea,especially with a baby coming.

 

[moskyx]

WOW this is the closest we are going to get with this guy almost admitting the devs fucked up and the Gomira big update was a terrible idea,especially with a baby coming.

I know it may be hard to believe given your mindset but you can think they are not always right and at the same time think they are honest devs. And it's their honesty what I am (and will be) defending on this thread as long as they don't prove me wrong. Which they haven't so far.

 

[Rosswel]

At this point, the next update will have to be MASSIVE and absolutely bug free to justify this amount of developing time. I personally can still accept the excuse health issue and having baby was several months ago but now it's very hard to accept.

I'm curious on how much time they spend each day working on this game because the progress on polishing feels very slow. If I'm being very generous then It is still possible that the next update is so huge that there's enormous amount of stuff to polish hence the slow pace but if that is the case then the progress report don't really show that and the devs better be more transparent on how an item in that progress bar is.

With how it is presented now, it is unclear how big each item is. Take "code" as example. It could be several lines of code for an event which makes this work pace incredibly slow. It might also be thousands line of code for a whole side quest and if that the case a "code" or two per day could makes sense.

 

[ラMr Shadow悪]

 

[DemiMaximoff]

it's their honesty what I am (and will be) defending on this thread as long as they don't prove me wrong. Which they haven't so far.

One day these devs will break into your home and massacre your family. The next day, you will be on this forum explaining how your family might have deserved to die, and the devs did nothing wrong

What does the progress report say? Art 100%. What does their patreon sneak peak show? Drawing completely new pictures. Dishonesty, clear as day

 

[Oriandu]

See, that's a legit point. Even more in this case, because when they actually started the development they knew they were going to have a baby soon and could have foreseen it was going to heavily impact their work (it was not their first child), so maybe it wasn't the right time for such an ambitious update as they originally envisioned for Gomira. It's true patrons voted for her at the start of 0.6 update though, and devs weren't expecting a baby back then, but looking back they should've toned things down a bit, at least.

I don't think toning things down would have kept this development cycle from literally being as long as the full development cycles of some video games are. The overall slow and inconsistent progress of the update tracker over the past two years leads me to one of two conclusions. First, they've started grifting and are purposefully taking their sweet ass time to try and earn as much as possible for as little work as possible. Second, the update started small and though a mix of inexperience and a lack of self control the scale for the update started to balloon out of control and as things got bigger and bigger they also became more disorganized and so they weren't able to work efficiently and anything that went wrong, such as coding issues as a whole, became a much larger issue.

 

[moskyx]

One day these devs will break into your home and massacre your family. The next day, you will be on this forum explaining how your family might have deserved to die, and the devs did nothing wrong

What does the progress report say? Art 100%. What does their patreon sneak peak show? Drawing completely new pictures. Dishonesty, clear as day

It also helps knowing how their workflow is. They plan, they do, they keep adding things until a point where they have a 'complete' build, then they start editing it. Which sometimes involves creating new artwork to replace the original. It's all in the faq in this very same thread OP.

How do you count edit tasks?
By edit we mean aspects that need to be improved or that we thought they would work but in testing we see that they don't, be it the writing, the posing, or the art. We edit the text all the time, and so every dialogue will have many edit tasks. The same is true with posing: sometimes, after seeing a scene, characters' expressions don't match the text or can be improved. Then there are art edits, which are often fixes or changes that Chestnut has to make after she's done with the game's main content.

Now, who's being dishonest here, these devs who explained at least 3 years ago how their workflow is, or those who simply don't care about those explanations and can't be bothered to read the available info before throwing their accusations?

 

[moskyx]

I don't think toning things down would have kept this development cycle from literally being as long as the full development cycles of some video games are. The overall slow and inconsistent progress of the update tracker over the past two years leads me to one of two conclusions. First, they've started grifting and are purposefully taking their sweet ass time to try and earn as much as possible for as little work as possible. Second, the update started small and though a mix of inexperience and a lack of self control the scale for the update started to balloon out of control and as things got bigger and bigger they also became more disorganized and so they weren't able to work efficiently and anything that went wrong, such as coding issues as a whole, became a much larger issue.

I'll just quote the dev on this (he posted this on Discord, on July 2nd):

I think I started this update with a wrong mindset as well. We had two quests in mind that we really liked and we went for them, without considering their complexity (I thought having fewer quests, i.e. 2 instead of our usual side-story's 3 would be sufficient in speeding things up)
In the future, if a story we really want to tell takes this long, we will break it up into multiple releases (that's what we will do, probably, with the next part of the main story)
Then for our previous updates we didn't have a baby/now-toddler. for every update, about halfway through dev period (sometimes sooner) we used to go crunch mode, and stop taking weekends off and work as many hours a day as it was possible. for 0.7, all of that time has been taken up by our child. some things that I would do before in say 2 days, now take double the time. Come this September she will go to nursery (we have signed up and are on waiting lists), and that should allow us to have more focused work time as well, because right now by the time we start work, we're so tired from babysitting that our work gets impacted

So yeah, your second conclusion seems kind of right, with this situation taking its toll on the quality of their work and leading them to major editing work after completing the initially planned content. As always, once the update is out we would be able to judge if this was such a complex quest or not. And then, when they focus on the next update, without the baby issues and with their lessons learned, we'll see if things go back to the previous normalcy and your first conclusion can be definitely ruled out.

 

[Evangelion-01]

It also helps knowing how their workflow is. They plan, they do, they keep adding things until a point where they have a 'complete' build, then they start editing it. Which sometimes involves creating new artwork to replace the original. It's all in the faq in this very same thread OP.


Now, who's being dishonest here, these devs who explained at least 3 years ago how their workflow is, or those who simply don't care about those explanations and can't be bothered to read the available info before throwing their accusations?

You expect total strangers to blindly believe into the words of other strangers?
Let's be honest here... on the Internet words are not only cheap, more than often they are falsely at work... an experienced surfer believes in actions not words and in that regard the Devs are more than lacking sadly.
True the last Update had an extremly long playtime even though the story wasn't as good as the previous ones (personal opinion).
Don't get me wrong I really like the game despite this being a sandbox VN which is normally not the game I play, still with this long of a development time they lost any reputation they had build in the years before, even if they announced longer and longer development times, people will tend to think they payed enough cash and attention to a game stuck in it's development phase for this long without any noticeable Update... seing videos of art being created isn't really assureing as you can't tell wether it's the main art which should have already been done or refined art and filler art to make transitions smoother.

I'll just quote the dev on this (he posted this on Discord, on July 2nd):


So yeah, your second conclusion seems kind of right, with this situation taking its toll on the quality of their work and leading them to major editing work after completing the initially planned content. As always, once the update is out we would be able to judge if this was such a complex quest or not. And then, when they focus on the next update, without the baby issues and with their lessons learned, we'll see if things go back to the previous normalcy and your first conclusion can be definitely ruled out.

Baby issues will never be completly gone... depending where they live it can be that the daycare will be closed 3 days a week (disease of kids and caretakers), lack of personal and revolting ones since pay isn't high enough, etc.
...The only thing that will change is the reason they can blame their lack of time to... well haveing a child that has a fixed sleeping scedule atleast should reduce that fatigue I gues.

 

[caviarkush1]

Once we finally get the update, we'll play it for an hour then wait another 2-3 years for Holly

 

[Mordikay]

Once we finally get the update, we'll play it for an hour then wait another 2-3 years for Holly

I'm a time traveler from the year 2132.

I'm sorry to inform you 0.8 was finished in 2062 with community voted femboy, reverse genderfied, blue hair and nosering character named Tommy. My grandson is still waiting on the 0.9 Holly update.

 

[PPeters98]

I'm a time traveler from the year 2132.

I'm sorry to inform you 0.8 was finished in 2062 with community voted femboy, reverse genderfied, blue hair and nosering character named Tommy. My grandson is still waiting on the 0.9 Holly update.

You criminal, if you were a real timetraveler, you would have supplied us with a mega link to 1.0 version at least.

 

[moskyx]

You expect total strangers to blindly believe into the words of other strangers?
Let's be honest here... on the Internet words are not only cheap, more than often they are falsely at work... an experienced surfer believes in actions not words and in that regard the Devs are more than lacking sadly.
True the last Update had an extremly long playtime even though the story wasn't as good as the previous ones (personal opinion).
Don't get me wrong I really like the game despite this being a sandbox VN which is normally not the game I play, still with this long of a development time they lost any reputation they had build in the years before, even if they announced longer and longer development times, people will tend to think they payed enough cash and attention to a game stuck in it's development phase for this long without any noticeable Update... seing videos of art being created isn't really assureing as you can't tell wether it's the main art which should have already been done or refined art and filler art to make transitions smoother.

Even if this is mainly a porn forum, I expect people to behave like rational adults. And so I expect people to take all the information available before judging. I'm not asking to blindly believe other strangers' word, but to make rational judgments after closely following the process (as I've done since 0.1 came out). And in this case, everything the devs said had always matched the outcome (and, most of times, they've actually underpromised and overdelivered). Now we all are watching the same signs, and it's up to every one of us to decide if those signs point to some unethical behavior or not. I honestly think that everything checks out so far, and even if you just don't trust devs' word because this is the internet and words are cheap and you have had bad experiences in the past, I don't think in this case you could find a single 'bad step' that couldn't be explained for the exact reasons the devs have stated (and punctually communicated to their actual supporters): they've always said they need to create new art in the polishing phase so why would people think this time is different, or why would people disregard so easily the effect that taking care of a newborn 24/7 can have over a creative work that wasn't brilliantly planned, as the devs themselves admitted. Sure, there can be other ill-born reasons too, but the ones officially given do check out.

So after seeing all this, people can still double down this take on devs being some extremely careful and refined scammers, or can at least show some caution before jumping to conclusions, giving them the benefit of the doubt just in case, and at least until the update is out. And that's my stance, I'm just sharing the info I think could debunk those claims so that other people can judge if it sounds reasonable enough, as it sounds to me. If someone makes what I think it's a wrong assumption, I point out why it's wrong using the available info and some logic. No one here is spending a dime on the game, and won't ever need to pay to enjoy the game, so I can't understand what exactly triggers people so much that they choose to join the scam train instead of being more accepting of those seemingly reasonable explanations. What can I say, maybe '12 Angry Men' impacted me more than others, but I'd feel slightly bad about myself if I were accusing some innocent people. And yes, I don't know if they are actually innocent, but what if?

 

[vks017]

We would all like to give them the benefit of the doubt.
However rational adults also look at overall trends. In this sector, adult VNs, there is a massive trend of devs working hard at first to get a steady following. Once this is achieved many here then reduce their work rate massively being content to cash in on their well earned followers. This has happened too often, citing every health/personal issues under the sun to become a recurring theme here.
So its come to the point where we are more likely to doubt than trust in cases like this. I would love to be proven wrong but the evidence here is not strong enough to do so yet.

 

[moskyx]

We would all like to give them the benefit of the doubt.
However rational adults also look at overall trends. In this sector, adult VNs, there is a massive trend of devs working hard at first to get a steady following. Once this is achieved many here then reduce their work rate massively being content to cash in on their well earned followers. This has happened too often, citing every health/personal issues under the sun to become a recurring theme here.
So its come to the point where we are more likely to doubt than trust in cases like this. I would love to be proven wrong but the evidence here is not strong enough to do so yet.

We'll soon™ see

 

[Evangelion-01]

or why would people disregard so easily the effect that taking care of a newborn 24/7 can have over a creative work that wasn't brilliantly planned, as the devs themselves admitted. Sure, there can be other ill-born reasons too, but the ones officially given do check out.

Actually that's what most puzzling... they never halted their Patreon and put the game onhold since there was no time for developing as you said yourself Babies normally have no concern for their Parent scedules or plans.
You have high trust in the devs so you assume the best... the people being vocale right now however seem to be the opposite, so assumeing that they didn't put any work in the last 1,5 years to raise their child is not unreasonable at all... the problem noone can tell as we weren't there, we can only make our own assumptions.

So after seeing all this, people can still double down this take on devs being some extremely careful and refined scammers, or can at least show some caution before jumping to conclusions, giving them the benefit of the doubt just in case, and at least until the update is out. And that's my stance, I'm just sharing the info I think could debunk those claims so that other people can judge if it sounds reasonable enough, as it sounds to me. If someone makes what I think it's a wrong assumption, I point out why it's wrong using the available info and some logic. No one here is spending a dime on the game, and won't ever need to pay to enjoy the game, so I can't understand what exactly triggers people so much that they choose to join the scam train instead of being more accepting of those seemingly reasonable explanations. What can I say, maybe '12 Angry Men' impacted me more than others, but I'd feel slightly bad about myself if I were accusing some innocent people. And yes, I don't know if they are actually innocent, but what if?

You are actually jumping to conclusions yourself here... why do you think none of their Patrons or EX Patrons are around here?
You yourself are the perfect example that people donating can still be interested to this thread... I do it myself with other Threads/games I support.
Don't get me wrong I am not accuseing them myself, but I point out that this discussion got more heat by the minute so this is my attempt to bring some reason back into this topic.
I do feel this long time is strange, but I am not invested enough to actually care, I am just worried that this trend will eventually kill the game

 

[DemiMaximoff]

make rational judgments after closely following the process (as I've done since 0.1 came out). And in this case, everything the devs said had always matched the outcome (and, most of times, they've actually underpromised and overdelivered)

Doesn't matter. People change. I did not have ball hair until I was 12, doesn't mean that my parents should assume that I still don't have it, even if they knew me since day 1.
The project took birth in the pandemic, as per the dev's statements, and the pandemic's far gone. They changed. That should be the educated assumption here, instead of 500 words long Moskyx X magicnuts fanfiction.