VN Ren'Py WVM [S2 Ch. 1 Ep. 13 B5] [Braindrop]

[henry hopkin]

That's not at all a valid reason. Pay by the render, make sure each render is checked and approved to meet BD's standard before paying. If they 'fuck up' then BD does the render anyway so there's no difference.

He's worried he won't be able to find anyone to keep up with his schedule of 100-150 renders a week. But the thing is even if he hires just 1 other person to do like 25-50 of the renders per week, that can make his own current "crazy" schedule to something much more manageable.

 

[The Krypt Angel]

That's not at all a valid reason. Pay by the render, make sure each render is checked and approved to meet BD's standard before paying. If they 'fuck up' then BD does the render anyway so there's no difference.

No matter how well intentioned your advice to hire help may be in the end Braindrop's gonna do what Braindrop's gonna do. He says he doesn't wanna hire help so that's how it is.....Whether or not you think that's what he should do is irrelevant.

 

[harem - king]

Yeah, and what Braindrop is doing is making him extremely depressed and stressed the fuck out. I'm simply offering the logical solution that thousands of other game developers have already done when faced with a similar situation. Up to him if he wants to inflict more damage on himself though.

 

[lemonfreak]

Yeah, and what Braindrop is doing is making him extremely depressed and stressed the fuck out. I'm simply offering the logical solution that thousands of other game developers have already done when faced with a similar situation. Up to him if he wants to inflict more damage on himself though.

Except that you missed the point he's been making in posts here and on Patreon, it's not the game that's making him miserable, it's shit happening in his real life that would still be happening even if he'd never started development. As an additional factor, ok, maybe it contributes to the overall negative feelings he's having but it's also a relief from them.

He's paused payments for a month to give himself some breathing room, I for one suspect he's still writing and rendering even as I type this, he's just doing it without the pressure of a release date which will actually allow him to get ahead and be halfway into week 3 when he starts releasing week 2 partials.

 

[qwsl]

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[lemonfreak]

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Listen to any podcast interview featuring any stand-up comedian, at some point they will, without fail, bring up the feeling they get when they see the 1 person not laughing in a crowd of 400 and find themselves unable to focus on anything else.

 

[armion82]

That's not at all a valid reason. Pay by the render, make sure each render is checked and approved to meet BD's standard before paying. If they 'fuck up' then BD does the render anyway so there's no difference.

So your idea is to pay money to someone to do the renders but if they are not good enough he have to do them himself?
The difference is he is X money and Y days behind.
You obvioulsy have no experience at all with creative work.
Hiring someone to paint,write or program not always leads to good things.Actually in most cases it leads to really bad things.We saw so many project/not only games/abandoned.

 

[Alma_Elma]

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To answer the last bit from a point of view of someone who delved into quite a lot of things, and tryed producing a wide range of things, you focus far more easily on that one negative comment, even more when you feel like there's real point being made.
Imagine doing something, and everyone praise you for it, and you think everything in it is fine, and one guy come and tells you there's something wrong, it doesn't have to be in a dick way, just pointing out something wrong when you though it was right can leads to you overthinking the negatives, and makes you feel like they're worse than they really are.

In short, like always the mind tends to focus on the negative rather than the positive.
That's also why I try to nuance my critics, telling the person the faults is as important as telling them how much you like what they do, I, personnaly, tend to get much more rational and stay calmer when the guy who point out the negative points, also tells me what's good and how he liked it overall, nuance when talking about a creation is probably the best way to both get your point accross if you feel like something is "bad", and to also support the guy who did it.

Well, all of that is mostly from personnal experiences, and from what I saw.

So I guess, like BD said, it's probably not the making of the game itself that takes a toll on him, but probably something as a whole, and when things aren't going your way IRL, you tend to focus much more in the negatives than anything else in your work. Of course that also doesn't help, the human mind is kind of a dick in these times.
All I can do is hope for the best for BD, and I think taking a month off payment seems to be the best course of action for him, it will allows him to take some deserved time off, and he can get ahead of his schedule. I just hope he wont feel the need to drop something big next month in guilt for him taking time off (I can attest how easy it is to feel guilty when you take more time than you announced, and how easy it is to fall into the trap of thinking you have to offer more to compensate)

All in all, I just wanted to come here since it's been quite a while, to give my support to BD, he's not as accustomed to making games as other big creators, getting so huge so quickly can lead to a lot of pressure, I just want him to take it easy.

 

[qwsl]

lemonfreak:
Well, here I can't help in anything, I am a designer, and I studied only the basics of psychology: self-protection from other people's influence, getting rid of stress and light complexes. Neutralization of trolls and aggressive people. I cannot solve deeper problems. The impostor complex is a more complicated thing, even for professionals.
Maybe there are professional psychologists or hypnosis experts among the fans - who will help overcome the problem? Or to inspire BD not to work to a state of nervous and physical exhaustion

An interesting coincidence: when the weather is fine, I can say with confidence that a message from BD appears here and if it rains, then no. And the better the weather, the higher the likelihood that the message will be positive. Does BD practice witchcrafting?

harmking: you completely forgot - BD is stubborn workaholic-perfectionist-masochist To make him take off part of the work and rest at least occasionally, and NOT feel obligated to every random dude, you need to send to him a National Guard, to prevent him to live near computer and force to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

 

[qwsl]

The more we ask BD not to push himself to the limit, the more stubborn he becomes. So, it’s better to generally close this topic in readonly until BD himself asks the moderators to reopen it. Otherwise, I'm afraid everything will end with the [Abandoned] tag. And this is one of the few games that I like, for light-heart positive attitude. There are a dozen others, no worse, but they have one small problem - updates are too rare, need BD and / or Killer7 to bite developers and infect them with more energy and a desire to update a little bit more often (but not so often as BD)

Master of Puppets: You are not quite right, it is the rendering, not the scene composition, that is what you CAN outsource, the problem is how quickly all the settings synchronize to get the same result, so that there are no differences in lighting

 

[Master of Puppets]

When it comes to hiring help, having someone else do some of the renders is the last thing I'd think of. Renders and writing are both 'artistic vision' type things after all, that you'll want done just your way. I can totally understand BD not wanting to outsource any of that. My mind would go to the programming, as a great many devs are art types rather than programmers. If you do have background in programming one thing that anyone could benefit from is hiring a proofreader.

 

[lemonfreak]

When it comes to hiring help, having someone else do some of the renders is the last thing I'd think of. Renders and writing are both 'artistic vision' type things after all, that you'll want done just your way. I can totally understand BD not wanting to outsource any of that. My mind would go to the programming, as a great many devs are art types rather than programmers. If you do have background in programming one thing that anyone could benefit from is hiring a proofreader.

100% on the proofreading, I remember a recent update of SpaceCorpsXXX where I caught 15-20 typos, grammatical errors and/or inconsistent word choices. Shit happens when devs rush to get an update done.

 

[MysteryCrabs]

When it comes to hiring help, having someone else do some of the renders is the last thing I'd think of. Renders and writing are both 'artistic vision' type things after all, that you'll want done just your way. I can totally understand BD not wanting to outsource any of that. My mind would go to the programming, as a great many devs are art types rather than programmers. If you do have background in programming one thing that anyone could benefit from is hiring a proofreader.

WVM barely has anything that would even require a programmer.

 

[aliceee]

Not in a hurry for a new update, hope creator takes his time and does it right instead, and WOW three weeks with no updates and thread goes into chaos arguing about anything and everything x3

 

[LewdGameGuy]

WVM barely has anything that would even require a programmer.

I can easily agree with this. Offloading the programming work would probably barely change anything. At most, the only programming required is just some variables that store the players' decisions that can be used for "if" conditionals in branching scenes later. I imagine the bulk of the work is in the coordination of the writing and posing.

 

[moskyx]

WVM barely has anything that would even require a programmer.

And still it had some minor bugs due to rushed updates. In the end everything comes to this insane pressure BD has put on himself with weeklies. No one else does it and I guess there's a reason for it. Developing a game is a hard process from its inception to proofreading and every step needs some time to be properly done. This also affects story and writting quality, which in my opinion are fair points made by some of his critics. He felt he needed to deliver a juicy update each week and it led to Days 6 and 7 being crammed with events, some of then originally planned for later weeks but included there for the shitty real life reasons we all know. I do hope everything settles down, there's no hurry

 

[lemonfreak]

Not in a hurry for a new update, hope creator takes his time and does it right instead, and WOW three weeks with no updates and thread goes into chaos arguing about anything and everything x3

Makes me glad I took 10-12 days away from the forum to get my head right, I was getting sucked into the drama and losing perspective. Lockdown's a bitch.

And still it had some minor bugs due to rushed updates. In the end everything comes to this insane pressure BD has put on himself with weeklies. No one else does it and I guess there's a reason for it. Developing a game is a hard process from its inception to proofreading and every step needs some time to be properly done. This also affects story and writting quality, which in my opinion are fair points made by some of his critics. He felt he needed to deliver a juicy update each week and it led to Days 6 and 7 being crammed with events, some of then originally planned for later weeks but included there for the shitty real life reasons we all know. I do hope everything settles down, there's no hurry

Except that the weeklies are very much WIP that only higher tier patrons are supposed to see, on the understanding that they're WIP. Full day releases have been sharper as those are the ones meant for public consumption. You're complaining that the steak is undercooked when it hasn't been placed on the grill, metaphorically speaking.

 

[moskyx]

Makes me glad I took 10-12 days away from the forum to get my head right, I was getting sucked into the drama and losing perspective. Lockdown's a bitch.

Except that the weeklies are very much WIP that only higher tier patrons are supposed to see, on the understanding that they're WIP. Full day releases have been sharper as those are the ones meant for public consumption. You're complaining that the steak is undercooked when it hasn't been placed on the grill, metaphorically speaking.

Weeklies were supposed to be WIP, yeah. But sadly that's not what weeklies actually are. They became one of the distinct quirks of this game and people came here (and went to his Patreon, I assume) complaining about their quality and delays. All in all, he reached a point where the smartest decision was doing exactly what he has done. Stop, breath and think (and start to work again) with a clearer mind free of deadlines.

 

[Krynh]

and WOW three weeks with no updates and thread goes into chaos arguing about anything and everything x3

I blame the lockdown. People now have nothing to do but be online on the forums arguing I'm one of them..

 

[lemonfreak]

Weeklies were supposed to be WIP, yeah. But sadly that's not what weeklies actually are. They became one of the distinct quirks of this game and people came here (and went to his Patreon, I assume) complaining about their quality and delays. All in all, he reached a point where the smartest decision was doing exactly what he has done. Stop, breath and think (and start to work again) with a clearer mind free of deadlines.

Players may believe that, especially my fellow pirate-scum, but they're wrong. The weeklies are a patron bonus and to pretend oterwise is to lie to yourself.

Now, to be clear, as far as I can remember I've never complained about the weeklies (other than wishing my fellow pirate-scum would release one that was being held back) because I understand they're WIP. The only real complaint I've ever had is the portrayal of Tali and, even then, I have to concede that it was for the wrong reasons.

Taking a slight detour, a rhetorical tool that I'm a fan of is 'How Would It Be Different?' which is primarily a tool for experts argueing against conspracy theorys, the idea being that you focus in the things that would appear to be true in both versions which then allows the person with actual facts to pick apart the arguement of the tin-foil hat wearer.

How is this in any way relevent I hear you ask? It's this. I believe that BD intended for Rachel to have a biological daughter (probably aged 20-25) who would've been introduced as a contrast to the MC; consider that he was taken from his mother by his father, had his name changed and forgot his past, meanwhile, his mother feeling guilty about giving up her son and failing to stop her daughter suffer a serious injury, actually gives up her remaining child.

Rachel, on the other hand, has real power and, when the (likely abusive in some way) father of her child tries to take his daughter away, uses that power to hide her daughter away until she reaches adulthood, inadvertantly stunting her emotional development which is nevertheless better than what would've happened.

However, BD's Patrons wanted a 30-something middle-eastern princess and he had to comply with their wishes. Tali was therefore changed to fit that criteria, not entirely successfully and that's why several players have a problem with her. Everything I've said is probably 100% BULLSHIT but, using the rhetorical tool I discussed a few paragraphs ago, how would things be different if that wasn't the case?