VN Ren'Py Where the Heart Is [S1 Rev1] [CheekyGimp]

[acewinz]

Music is gonna end up taking too long.

Please don't spend time making music when you could be advancing the plot.

Adding background/acoustic/ambiance music is easy, finding good background music is time consuming, but it is out there, adding good music with lyrics though and the sequences I believe we want takes days per sequence (something in the vein of Leap of Faith or Where it all Began). I did one as an example for our test/beta group for Theresa, which was a sort relationship evolution montage after her sex scene. The basics weren't hard, but I had to get perfectionist with it and had the lyrics on screen... timing them to show up with the music right was the time consuming part. All told that one took me 3 days to craft, but it was a nice touch and hope to see it in the final version of the game. Cheeky and I liked it, but few of our testers bothered to try it or report on it, so I could just be biased .

Still the hardest part is actually finding lyrical music that is not copyrighted/free use that is actually fitting to the setting and good. Unfortunately a lot of the sites (artist.io for example) that provide bulk musical copyright have exclusions for anything deemed pornographic (so if the artist has an issue, you have to remove it). Thankfully most AVN's just slide under the radar when it comes to that, but poor Drifty (Leap of Faith) ended up gaining attention he didn't want when he went to steam requiring some retooling. Something we are trying to avoid before we dive into the pool. So the story will as always come first, but we also are planning for the future. Especially given the economic situation is really kicking crowd funded devs right now.

 

[Abhai]

Adding background/acoustic/ambiance music is easy, finding good background music is time consuming, but it is out there, adding good music with lyrics though and the sequences I believe we want takes days per sequence (something in the vein of Leap of Faith or Where it all Began). I did one as an example for our test/beta group for Theresa, which was a sort relationship evolution montage after her sex scene. The basics weren't hard, but I had to get perfectionist with it and had the lyrics on screen... timing them to show up with the music right was the time consuming part. All told that one took me 3 days to craft, but it was a nice touch and hope to see it in the final version of the game. Cheeky and I liked it, but few of our testers bothered to try it or report on it, so I could just be biased .

Still the hardest part is actually finding lyrical music that is not copyrighted/free use that is actually fitting to the setting and good. Unfortunately a lot of the sites (artist.io for example) that provide bulk musical copyright have exclusions for anything deemed pornographic (so if the artist has an issue, you have to remove it). Thankfully most AVN's just slide under the radar when it comes to that, but poor Drifty (Leap of Faith) ended up gaining attention he didn't want when he went to steam requiring some retooling. Something we are trying to avoid before we dive into the pool. So the story will as always come first, but we also are planning for the future. Especially given the economic situation is really kicking crowd funded devs right now.

yeah, adult games, to not say "porn", are all about fitting music.
the best thing in retro adult (porn) movies are those great "atmospheric" melodies...one doesnt need sounds, nor dialogue, monologue, even story/scenes itself arent that important, compared to overwhelming magic of music!
*sarcasm of* sorry,i know there are a lot of (avn)music lovers around (tastes differ, thats ok), yet i had to

 

[Ilhares]

the best thing in retro adult (porn) movies are those great "atmospheric" melodies

It was at this point I knew you were having a laugh, because I'm old enough to remember what those films were like back in the day. There's a reason people still joke about the music that was used.

 

[BeingADikDik]

It was at this point I knew you were having a laugh, because I'm old enough to remember what those films were like back in the day. There's a reason people still joke about the music that was used.

who could get tired of Grammy award winning hit "brown chicken, brown cow"??

 

[Night Hacker]

who could get tired of Grammy award winning hit "brown chicken, brown cow"??

 

[vifaloveyou]

In case anyone is interested. I updated my twitter below with a blooper from last EP and some minor EP23 teasers. Some follows/retweets/replies are appreciated. Trying to see if this is a viable way to reach some new fans. And some of it is even SFW in case that is an issue for you .

The number of supporters is growing, which is great, but I wish the update time would get faster with more supporters

 

[acewinz]

The number of supporters is growing, which is great, but I wish the update time would get faster with more supporters

I wish this was the case, but we've lost about 200 patreons and about 10% of our monthly income since the economy went in the pot in spite of a lot of attempts to advertise and add goals that may be appealing. After multiple attempts we finally added another writer/coder (Wiz) who has had some time to get up to speed, but our repeated attempts to add another steady artist/animator have continually been unlucky. :S

In the last year or two I believe we have trialed 5 folks trying to expand our artists (after god knows how many didn't make it past Cheeky's screening). Of those 5, two just weren't cut out for it, one ghosted half way into a scene (which also happened to Cheeky's first additional artist way back), the one most qualified/talented so far was unable to continue working because their country was invaded :S, but the one that took the cake actually tried to extort us. lol We are trialing another one now (lucky number 6?). Hope they can break the curse.

 

[vifaloveyou]

I wish this was the case, but we've lost about 200 patreons and about 10% of our monthly income since the economy went in the pot in spite of a lot of attempts to advertise and add goals that may be appealing. After multiple attempts we finally added another writer/coder (Wiz) who has had some time to get up to speed, but our repeated attempts to add another steady artist/animator have continually been unlucky. :S

In the last year or two I believe we have trialed 5 folks trying to expand our artists (after god knows how many didn't make it past Cheeky's screening). Of those 5, two just weren't cut out for it, one ghosted half way into a scene (which also happened to Cheeky's first additional artist way back), the one most qualified/talented so far was unable to continue working because their country was invaded :S, but the one that took the cake actually tried to extort us. lol We are trialing another one now (lucky number 6?). Hope they can break the curse.

I hope you can find someone full of talent to join you and can speed up the updates
There is no doubt that the story you have created is really engaging, but the update times have been slow and each version is a long wait!

So far, I think the developers of No More Money and Secret Summer have the best update times, with a steady update in 1-2 months.

 

[acewinz]

I hope you can find someone full of talent to join you and can speed up the updates
There is no doubt that the story you have created is really engaging, but the update times have been slow and each version is a long wait!

So far, I think the developers of No More Money and Secret Summer have the best update times, with a steady update in 1-2 months.

The update times have gotten slower unfortunately since the start it is a fact, but it is the price we all pay for the breadth of choice and quality/quantity of content. I have played both of those games and have corresponded with with Superwriter (dev of secret summer) many times as a patreon and associate. I am not sure what the team size is for No More Money, but I know Super pretty much does it all himself which is definite props, but it really is apples to oranges to compare us with almost anyone.

Many of Super's games (Secret Summer for example) are static images and no animations (still great and I'm a big fan of his character models, but animations are a considerable time investment he doesn't have to deal with). No More Money does have animations but can and does do updates with no sex at all. Which is something we have never done in my years working on this game. Every update you the MC can get laid at least 2-3 times or more lol.

If we are comparing, most games I believe will push out 150-300 renders an update give or take animations in 1-2 months. Our last several Eps averaged 1k-1200 images, while I'm not as familiar with the amount of coding done by others I doubt many reach the 10-12k lines we have been averaging per EP even when you add up all their updates compared to our longer cycles.

There are some teams out there I can only envy the amount of talent and teams they must bring to bear on their games (NLT/Treasure of Nadia) for example, but I'm not disappointed in anyway in what we do and how much of it and if pareons want to save some money between updates that is fine even if it is a bit sad for our pocket books, but we have our eye on the endgame when we publish a finished product we can be proud of and thankful for the core group of patreons that have stuck with us through it all. If we manage to expand our team as we have been trying to for quite some time, we might be able to push out content faster, but at present until we find another reliable artist that is a WIP.

 

[vifaloveyou]

The update times have gotten slower unfortunately since the start it is a fact, but it is the price we all pay for the breadth of choice and quality/quantity of content. I have played both of those games and have corresponded with with Superwriter (dev of secret summer) many times as a patreon and associate. I am not sure what the team size is for No More Money, but I know Super pretty much does it all himself which is definite props, but it really is apples to oranges to compare us with almost anyone.

Many of Super's games (Secret Summer for example) are static images and no animations (still great and I'm a big fan of his character models, but animations are a considerable time investment he doesn't have to deal with). No More Money does have animations but can and does do updates with no sex at all. Which is something we have never done in my years working on this game. Every update you the MC can get laid at least 2-3 times or more lol.

If we are comparing, most games I believe will push out 150-300 renders an update give or take animations in 1-2 months. Our last several Eps averaged 1k-1200 images, while I'm not as familiar with the amount of coding done by others I doubt many reach the 10-12k lines we have been averaging per EP even when you add up all their updates compared to our longer cycles.

There are some teams out there I can only envy the amount of talent and teams they must bring to bear on their games (NLT/Treasure of Nadia) for example, but I'm not disappointed in anyway in what we do and how much of it and if pareons want to save some money between updates that is fine even if it is a bit sad for our pocket books, but we have our eye on the endgame when we publish a finished product we can be proud of and thankful for the core group of patreons that have stuck with us through it all. If we manage to expand our team as we have been trying to for quite some time, we might be able to push out content faster, but at present until we find another reliable artist that is a WIP.

Thank you very much developer acewinz for your detailed answer, every time your work does not disappoint, as a big fan of your game, I really want to play the new content sooner LOL

 

[Deleted member 3325933]

I wish this was the case, but we've lost about 200 patreons and about 10% of our monthly income since the economy went in the pot in spite of a lot of attempts to advertise and add goals that may be appealing. After multiple attempts we finally added another writer/coder (Wiz) who has had some time to get up to speed, but our repeated attempts to add another steady artist/animator have continually been unlucky. :S

In the last year or two I believe we have trialed 5 folks trying to expand our artists (after god knows how many didn't make it past Cheeky's screening). Of those 5, two just weren't cut out for it, one ghosted half way into a scene (which also happened to Cheeky's first additional artist way back), the one most qualified/talented so far was unable to continue working because their country was invaded :S, but the one that took the cake actually tried to extort us. lol We are trialing another one now (lucky number 6?). Hope they can break the curse.

I think you need an HR unit to do some vetting. Also the extortion may be worth visiting the local PD. It can be rewarding to see a 'jackass' introduced to "Bubba'.

 

[bosa43]

I really liked the scene where you can basically turn Jenna in to a cuck. I wish we could do something similar to Katie maybe with Jenna. I lie the sibling rivalry thing that's going on as well.

 

[qqwweee_123]

walkthrough ep 22?

 

[ghostrider4570]

Now if we could just convince Katie to be less jealous, controlling, and possessive and get on board the share train with Jenna

 

[lordofhirunds]

Now if we could just convince Katie to be less jealous, controlling, and possessive and get on board the share train with Jenna

To accomplish this we will have to make a pilgrimage to NUESTRA Senora de Guadalupe, Fatima and also Lourdes and pray a lot.

 

[compaq]

At some point when the game is complete, and I'm guessing there's not a whole lot left to the story, there is going to be a functional scene gallery within the complete edition?

 

[NeoEros]

Does anyone know how many episodes the developers intend to make? Currently playing episode 16 and I have to say this is the longest Renpy I've ever played and it seems like I haven't reached half of the story yet.

 

[WhiteyG]

Does anyone know how many episodes the developers intend to make? Currently playing episode 16 and I have to say this is the longest Renpy I've ever played and it seems like I haven't reached half of the story yet.

Probably around 30 episodes when finished but that's just an estimate. I don't think they have an exact number of episodes figured out yet.

 

[acewinz]

At some point when the game is complete, and I'm guessing there's not a whole lot left to the story, there is going to be a functional scene gallery within the complete edition?

Maybe. We were hoping the quickstart would suffice for that, but if the demand is there I think Cheeky will revisit updating the gallery.

Does anyone know how many episodes the developers intend to make? Currently playing episode 16 and I have to say this is the longest Renpy I've ever played and it seems like I haven't reached half of the story yet.

Initial estimates were 25, but I think we would have to make them even bigger than they already are to meet that. I think we will go over a bit depending on how much cramming we do and that isn't counting the Epilogues.

 

[Deleted member 4887608]

Do we get to hate fuck Elanie yet? If not when?