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So a funny thing happened on the way to the stable build. . .

I had been working on the stable build, fixing bugs that people brought up. A lot of people were reporting two problems, that the girls were bothering them about their comings and goings even if they weren't in the room at the time, and that clothes were behaving oddly, with characters changing clothes at random, or announcing that they were changing clothes when they shouldn't even be around. There were also somewhat related issues like when girls show up after you "wait", they don't always react as expected to the situation.

The more I looked into what was causing this issue, the more started to unravel.

So basically I've spent the past few days completely rebuilding how girls enter and leave rooms in your presence, and how they change their clothing. It's been a bunch of little tweaks all over the place, plus some fairly large chunks to manage it all. The end result should be pretty good though, a system where when you're already in a room and girls show up, they'll say "hi" and dress accordingly, where they should be less prone to telling you they're leaving if they were never there in the first place, just, better. 

But it has kind of stalled wrapping up this build while I finish getting it together, and might introduce a few different bugs when tested. So, sorry about that, but I think the end result will be worth it.

Also, it doesn't help anything that I leave two different copies of the code editor open, one filled with "work" code and the other filled with nearly identical "latest build" code, and every time Windows 10 goes into standby mode and comes out of it, it might decide to shuffle their order on the taskbar. ;)

Comments

Darkfirephoenix

Slowly I think it would be easier to tear the whole thing down and rebuild it from scratch. And I see many people in forums getting REALLY angry about all those delays Oni, saying that it is either incompetence of the highest degree, laziness or just pushing the release back to make more money. At one point you should understand that if you can't handle the coding stuff you should get some help/someone who does it for you as it will just piss people off (because of the reasons I mentioned above, incompetence etc.). Yes this Patreon isn't mainly about the game and it is mainly something to support you, but you are mainly making ART, so having someone else (who you can trust) do the coding stuff while you make the art for the game would be a good idea. You could still learn coding on the side (and try making code for the game) and once you have the feeling that you are good enough you can do it on your own. I hope this (as I hope objective) critique will help you.

Brian99

I don't know what's wrong with my game but for some reason vaginal has the same line used over and over and doesn't stimulate her at all.

OniArtist

Well there's very little currently in the game that has survived the early versions, mostly some basic stats. Everything has been iterated as I've gone to make it work better. Starting from scratch certainly wouldn't speed up the next release. Please let me know where I can find these forums, I like to collect as much data as I can on the game, and while I get a ton of useful feedback from patrons, it never hurts to get more. As for why the game sometimes takes a while between releases, certainly incompetence is a factor. I started this project with basically no coding experience, and have learned better and better ways to do things as I go. Laziness? Maybe. I mean I try to put as many hours into this project as I can, I've been dying to make some time to play Prey or finish Horizon but haven't been able to justify taking the time out of working on the game. There are always more hours in the day though. As for "deliberately pushing back the release," that one I find nonsensical. I don't even know why anyone would think that. If I could "finish" Rogue-Like tomorrow, I would do it in a heartbeat. I would immediately start another project, and I expect a lot of people would follow me to it (lose a few, gain a few). By that I don't mean that I want to quit or anything, far from it, but I would love to actually have this game in a state that I would consider "finished," with a dozen or more cool characters, all sorts of features to interact with them, the sort of game that I would consider the "completed vision." If I could deliver that tomorrow, nothing would stop me from doing so. Unfortunately, what you see is what I got. All I have still sitting around is half finished scenes or code fragments that aren't ready for prime time, or a few art assets lying around that still need to be polished up, animated, spritified, or whatever to make them work as intended in the game, and it will all get in eventually, but there are more constructive tasks I can be doing right now. I have gotten some help over the years on the coding front, and welcome any input I can get on that stuff, but a lot of what I've been dealing with is just grinding out the sequences, nothing overly complicated so much as just putting the bricks together in the right pattern to achieve the desired result. It's hard for me to figure out which parts even _could_ be outsourced. I welcome any help I can get to speed this project up, and I'm more than willing to compensate people for their time if they add value to the project, but figuring out the best way to coordinate multiple people and maintain the project as a consistent vision is harder than it sounds until you actually try it. I do appreciate the critique though, and will continue to try and figure out ways to improve the development process.

OniArtist

Well, I'm not sure why you'd be getting the same line repeatedly. I assume you just mean the standard sex scene? No matter what happens you should be getting a selection of five or more different lines each cycle. The stat increases do seem to be an issue with this new build though, they do not seem to be applying as much as they should. I'll definitely work on that.

voyeurkind

I think you're doing a good job. Yes it would be nice to have things quicker, but I can also understand what's holding things up. I'm a professional coder, and perhaps I can offer you some advice in terms of how to work more efficiently:

voyeurkind

Oops, hit return before I meant to: * It's easy to say "bring in more people" but the reality is that doesn't always help. As the saying goes, 9 women can't conceive a baby in one month. * Speaking of babies, this is your baby. It can be hard to let go and involve other people, particularly other people who might have different ideas and want to take the project in directions you hadn't planned and aren't sure you want to explore. * It might be more helpful for you to find a project manager before trying to bring on more coders, writers, artists, etc. A good project manager can help you identify which areas of the game need your explicit attention and which could be passed on to someone else. * When coding, one of the most useful things you can do when you run into a problem is to take that problem to another developer. Sometimes, the act of describing the problem will help you find a solution. Also a fresh pair of eyes on a problem also can bring a fresh perspective.

voyeurkind

Consider looking into version control. That's one way you could minimize the possibility of overwriting your up-to-date production game code.

Waelan

You'll get there. :) Eh, I ran into an odd one. I don't know if your ongoing fixes would take care of that too or not. When fondling Kitty in two different places (for example her ass and her pussy), if you shift your focus from one to the other, Rogue (not being present) asks which clothes she should remove. After which she is suddenly there, and it turns into a threesome.

onen

Time to go into power options and tell it to never go to sleep, I think.

LeoDustin

So Oni, what can we expect for the next update?

Anonymous

Will you address two minor immersion-breaking bugs in the next build? 1) Rogue_Doggy.rpy, line 812: obedience check for forced anal should be 700, not 70. 2) Rogue_Chat.rpy (lines 3109-3114) and Kitty_Chat.rpy (lines 1919-1924): for some reason you set a very high tempmod value when either girl is going to go from current location to either classroom or danger room. Therefore player can force them to stay and initiate some very high-stat sex acts (because of a massive tempmod). UPD: and another very minor one. "script Scenes.rpy", lines 325-337: Rogue asks you to sleep with her when R_Sleep is either <3 or >3. So when you stayed together exactly three times, she suddenly "loses interest" and you have to ask her to stay again.

OniArtist

Lol, that is an odd one. There are a few possibilities as to what might cause that, I'll try and track it down.

OniArtist

Well, I actually like it going to sleep (and it's one of the few things that works better than Win7), it's just an annoying habit it has to shuffle the order of program tabs. I just have to stay on top of it. ;)

OniArtist

Well, what I'm thinking right now is that I might just bang together a 0.973f build that fixes the bugs NOT related to the issues I described above, and release that as a "stable build" (assuming it lasts a couple days without new bugs showing up), but then quickly after that release a 0.974 build that includes the new location-tracking systems I was talking about, because that will require its own rounds of testing. Now bigger picture stuff, the next significant build I'm working towards should have things like Kitty's room and the associated content, Kitty's relationship drama, some more "event" style scenes along the lines of the new classroom stuff, a "female hand" graphic for the fondling animations for when one girl is interacting with another, better position management for the second girl in a threesome, etc. Those are my main goals, assuming I don't get distracted by more squirrels.

OniArtist

1. Wow, yeah, that is some oldschool legacy code. Fixed. 2. I see what I did there, should be fixed now. The intention there was to have them prefer to be in certain locations, making it less likely that they would leave them just because you asked. I not only reduced the tempmod values because they were just too high, but also made them local to the label so they should clear when the label finishes. 3. Headsmack. That is actually not the worst conditional fail I've ever done. ;) Thanks a lot for these, should be fixed in 0.973f and anything else you find would be greatly appreciated.

Dubsington

For your first 10 years or so of learning to program, you learn rapidly enough that anything you wrote more than about 6-12 months ago seems like utter shit and you want to rewrite it. Sometimes this is worth doing, sometimes it is not. I think hiring a coder is not a bad move; your game is very popular but I've heard a lot of people complain (on discord and elsewhere) about how long you're taking. Having someone strong with code helping you out might actually make you more money in the long run, and will definitely make the fans happy. Your art is amazing; I'd much rather have you continuing to make great art that only you can make, than spending time on bleah code that others could do.

OniArtist

Yeah, the problem is, while my code is a mess, and prone to bugs that need to be ironed out, it does a lot of things that the other games I've tried don't, and I enjoy figuring out how to do new and interesting gameplay experiences. It's hard to find someone that I could trust with just "go forth and make this game" and hope for the best, and since the coding style I have is somewhat rudimentary, I have a feeling that if a good coder did take over on the project I wouldn't be able to understand anything that they wrote and would just have to trust that it does the things I want done. That's a kind of tough place to be in from a creative standpoint. A lot of my work time is spent designing how the content should work, more than the nuts and bolts of actually implementing it, so I'm genuinely unsure how much time I could pick up by outsourcing that work. But I do my best to resist the urge to rewrite an element unless it is significantly getting in the way of something I'd like to do. ;)

Anonymous

How can i use cheats?

Pheonixarcher

Is there any version of this game that's publicly available? I can't find one here.

Anonymous

Do you use version control systems for your code, for example git? It's more convenient than manually keeping different versions.

FG13

Hey... I was wondering. The build currently lacks any kind of gape content, both V/A or after BJ mouthfulls.... okay, wait, I do recall one scene where Rogue does that but I don't remember how I got it, wasn't the BJ route. It's probably not your list of priorities in the current development process, but it would be cool to have that added into the artwork in the future. Maybe have the option to make the male transparent. It just gets a bit boring all from the same perspective in the same position, so something like that would spice it up. Cross sections are cool too, but that's probably a lot more work than transparent male bits. :) Thanks for all your effort and work.

ZULEYKA GAMES

I was wondering about BJ scenes too ;) well done! Keep this great work up! ;)