Ren'Py The Headmaster [v0.15.3.1 Public] [Altos and Herdone]

[Hanny2000]

Tough question. I have struggled with a lot of things over the years. Figuring out the headmaster's justifications for all the clearly perverse and immoral things he does, and trying to keep them consistent and believable (at least within the context of the games world) isn't as easy as I make it look. I usually have at least a couple of weeks in each update cycle where I'm really stressed out trying to figure these things out. I normally just keep obsessing over the details until everything suddenly falls into place. I think Rachel's storyline was the hardest from that point of view. However, finally having that eureka moment and figuring out how to tie the scenes together and to get to the ending I want is always very satisfying. So I guess the hardest and most satisfying parts are often the same thing.
I think my favourite scene to make is probably still the water fight. I had a lot of fun with that one. Also, that was one of the first scenes I made after quitting my day job to do this full time, so it was extra enjoyable to be doing something so fun and creative instead of sitting in an office doing a job I hated.

I totally agree with you.
When I first applied as a teacher, I was hoping to teach high school students, but I got to teach young learners instead. I only work four days a week, but I had to teach two subjects, I like teaching English. I did teach English Grammar though, but I also had to teach ICT (Computer).
As much as I like teaching, I worked for three months, to see wether I should continue or not.
Well, I resigned after three months. Because I couldn't handle teaching many classes.

I taught two subjects, English Grammar and ICT.
I don't teach on Wednesday.

Monday to Tuesday, I teach ICT.
Class 4A&4B, 5A&5B, 6A&6B.
Six classes in total.

Thursday to Friday, I teach English Grammar.
Class 1A&1B, 2A&2B,...,6A&B.
Twelve classes in total.
I taught almost twenty classes each week.
I also used 5 different books to teach these classes.
That's why I resigned.

 

[ccxvidonaferens]

I think my favourite scene to make is probably still the water fight. I had a lot of fun with that one. Also, that was one of the first scenes I made after quitting my day job to do this full time, so it was extra enjoyable to be doing something so fun and creative instead of sitting in an office doing a job I hated.

I'll admit, that water gun fight gave me a real heavy nostalgia kick due to the music and sound effects used. It's been over a quarter century but I still remember Goldeneye on the N64 fondly. Still have it somewhere in the house, in fact.

 

[Perniciousducks]

This is a fair point. I did not intend to imply that these updates were equal scope or size. I was trying to illustrate the growth of the story. Depending on how you define you workload your critique is valid.
Also I am certainly not a troll as some other person said. I have a great appreciation for the work games take. I have more experience in this area than many here would understand. The only reason I even bothered to comment is because of how much this game stands out from the others on this site. You can see I generally keep to myself.

I suppose my grip is surrounding *where* the effort takes place. The original goal for subscribing was to increase output and increase releases. As others have pointed out, the storyline has slowed down (and there are may open stories such as: Yoga on the weekends, Nude beach, fantasy board game, Ms Chang etc.). I know some polls have pushed you to update other things. As much as engagement with your supporters is important sometimes giving them an update they DON'T want is better so they anticipate the update they DO want.
Additionally, some of the new dialog reiterates things the player already knows. You may have written the original explanation four years ago but the player just saw the MC explain his feelings less than an hour ago. You can save writing time and allow the player to insert themselves into the mind of the MC.
Finally, patrol events add a lot more to the game then they are given credit for and should be a focus in and of themselves. I think you have talked about this previously at some point so see my point about allowing the subscribers to dictate your focus.

If you are now the bottleneck then the amount of subscribers and financial support should help find a way through this problem. There are many creative people out there that can help with this burden. You are the leader of a small company of sorts now. Ultimately your delegation, approval, and oversite would be the key to continued success.

Anyway, I appreciate your initial response. I am sure you are not interested in a back and forth in a public forum with some bloke on the internet. I truly wish you luck and hope to resubscribe soon.

Summary:

By subscribing I wanted more content, and while you provided more and better content, you didn’t do it specifically in the way I wanted.

You do polls and focus on what your patrons want, but have you considered it would be better to do what I think is important instead?

Now that you have other people contributing, have you considered hiring a writer to write your story for you?

 

[wojtowicz]

Bruh cassandras blowjob was hard to play i had an "teeth" bJ as my first and last never again i let a girls mouth near my jr.
Anyway love this game its my favorit game ever hope it will never end love it love it prob bcs im a DOM still love it
but plz stop with this wierd pain blowjobs hopefully it was just one time my ptsd kicking in

 

[Sorairi]

I hope somebody reads this. I have a little bug. Idk if it's my save file. I'm pretty far into the story, right now I'm doing Henriette's contraband quest. The thing is, there are some quests I can't do because I can't access the office, everytime I click on the door, it skips to the next part of the day. Anyone else have this problem? or a Fix?

 

[snideremark]

I have a pretty strange bug in my playthrough. For some reason Cassandra's quest didn't show up for me at all. The quest isn't listed in the Quests screen, but strangely enough I can still kind of do the quests. There are some strange things with it though, firstly punishing her tells me she can't be leveled up when she actually can be leveled up (this happened up to lvl 4), also and connected to this I think is that the 'Mouse over for hint' hint before punishing tells me to do certain things to be able to level her up (like enact rules) that I have already done. At last (kind of understandable as the game seems to think I lack the requirements) there are no guided punishments for her up until also lvl 4.

Edit: Interestingly, after I finished the quest it now finally shows up in the quest screen.

 

[raven54]

I hope somebody reads this. I have a little bug. Idk if it's my save file. I'm pretty far into the story, right now I'm doing Henriette's contraband quest. The thing is, there are some quests I can't do because I can't access the office, everytime I click on the door, it skips to the next part of the day. Anyone else have this problem? or a Fix?

Generally speaking, bug reports can be kind of useless unless the developer can reproduce the issue. If everybody else trying the same thing goes "works for me", then there really isn't much to do about it as nobody will have a clue to what could have gone wrong.

The easiest way to get other people to reproduce an issue is to provide a savegame where the issue happens consistently. Often that is the only way to figure out what went wrong.

As for this specific bug, I have no clue to what the problem could be. I might have if I had access to the source code, but then again it is a case of works for most people, so it's probably an issue with some variable not being set correctly.

 

[Cartageno]

Generally speaking, bug reports can be kind of useless unless the developer can reproduce the issue. If everybody else trying the same thing goes "works for me", then there really isn't much to do about it as nobody will have a clue to what could have gone wrong.

The easiest way to get other people to reproduce an issue is to provide a savegame where the issue happens consistently. Often that is the only way to figure out what went wrong.

As for this specific bug, I have no clue to what the problem could be. I might have if I had access to the source code, but then again it is a case of works for most people, so it's probably an issue with some variable not being set correctly.

Your suggestion of sharing a save is still valid though, because not only may be someone out there to figure out what went wrong, but even if not that we can check whether we will have the same issue (which means it's in the save) or not (which means that for whatever reason some bits got drunk at the OP's place and a simple redownload of the game might fix it).

 

[devonY7]

Development Update 54

Spoiler: dev update april 26

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[ymisoinsane]

Summary:

By subscribing I wanted more content, and while you provided more and better content, you didn’t do it specifically in the way I wanted.

You do polls and focus on what your patrons want, but have you considered it would be better to do what I think is important instead?

Now that you have other people contributing, have you considered hiring a writer to write your story for you?

No. But reading is tough so I'll help you out mate.

By subscribing I wanted more content, and while you provided more and better content, you didn’t do it specifically in the way I wanted. - Wanted more frequent updates which is what was promised, on the Patreon site, by the developer and not delivered. He argued they had more 'content' per update but that was not the original issue.

You do polls and focus on what your patrons want, but have you considered it would be better to do what I think is important instead? - I don't care if he listens to my specific needs. But he should listen to his own. He literally just posted "I fully admit that I got sidelined with the mole rat storyline, and I've spoken about that at length before. There were a lot of reasons for this. However, one of the main ones was that I did not properly think through a poll. I was surprised by people's choice and had a hard time pulling off what I promised." My point was, he should focus on what he thinks is important before the masses. Working on patrol events are not going to win any polls. But if it needs to be done then do it save the mole rate stuff for another time.
If I were talking about my own interests I would have him focus on the sports club /gym / volleyball because there is a lot there I would like to see but I didn't mention any of those things. Instead I'm proposing things that would help him, move the story along, save time, and reduce the stress.

Now that you have other people contributing, have you considered hiring a writer to write your story for you? - This one doesn't make any sense. He already hires people to do work on the game. He already said he is the bottleneck. He already said his hours are long. People can help write copy. It happens all the time. He can hire people to help create graphics but not write dialog? It doesn't mean they have to write the whole thing.

Disagree with me all you want but don't put words in my mouth.

 

[oceanbobo4]

Arabella is adorable in the new cafeteria uniform. She's adorable always, actually.

 

[Sorairi]

Generally speaking, bug reports can be kind of useless unless the developer can reproduce the issue. If everybody else trying the same thing goes "works for me", then there really isn't much to do about it as nobody will have a clue to what could have gone wrong.

The easiest way to get other people to reproduce an issue is to provide a savegame where the issue happens consistently. Often that is the only way to figure out what went wrong.

As for this specific bug, I have no clue to what the problem could be. I might have if I had access to the source code, but then again it is a case of works for most people, so it's probably an issue with some variable not being set correctly.

Oh, I'm sorry. I can definitely share a Save file. I'm just not too tech savy, nor do I play that many ren'py games. Any help would be very well appreciated!

Edit: Oh I forgot to mention too, I've downloaded newer updates as they come too, been sure to keep it up to date with content as well, but that doesn't seem to fix the issue.

 

[mintymuz]

Oh, I'm sorry. I can definitely share a Save file. I'm just not too tech savy, nor do I play that many ren'py games. Any help would be very well appreciated!

Edit: Oh I forgot to mention too, I've downloaded newer updates as they come too, been sure to keep it up to date with content as well, but that doesn't seem to fix the issue.

On both of those quick save files, I clicked on the office and it skipped me to the evening. I skipped the day from the evening screen, and the next morning it allowed me into the office fine.

 

[mikesbreak]

easily the best game I've played

 

[marcomemmey]

easily the best game I've played

dunno I still like elden ring better

 

[pothb]

dunno I still like elden ring better

Priti > Melina though.

 

[SilentType]

However, my plans have changed a fair bit since then. I spent about a week and half on Mykocks manor, plus a little over two weeks implementing the new cafeteria uniforms. So, that's about four weeks I’ve managed to put myself behind schedule already. I am also going to need a little more time than I initially anticipated introducing Sally's new outfit. Plus, to be entirely honest, I struggled a bit over the writing for Samantha’s content and got stuck over that for a little while. So, all I can say at the moment is the next update is delayed by about six weeks or so. On the positive side, more development time just means a bigger and better update and version 0.16 is shaping up to be a good one.

Translation: I fucked around on a pretty boring side game which didn't really add anything of value, then spent two weeks (???) implementing an outfit which I'd already shown previously. Then, since I lied about how planned out and written the next updates were in a previous update, I had to struggle to actually write Samantha's content. The next update won't be bigger as I've just told you how much time I wasted, and the updates are always pretty much the same size, but hopefully telling you to wait till Summer for a big update will ensure no one gets upset I'm taking 10 years to develop this game, it's been 5 already! Oops!

 

[sucascu]

Mac zip is broken it seems

 

[PBS666]

Mac zip is broken it seems

Which hosting site ? Which error ?

 

[raven54]

Translation: I fucked around on a pretty boring side game which didn't really add anything of value, then spent two weeks (???) implementing an outfit which I'd already shown previously. Then, since I lied about how planned out and written the next updates were in a previous update, I had to struggle to actually write Samantha's content. The next update won't be bigger as I've just told you how much time I wasted, and the updates are always pretty much the same size, but hopefully telling you to wait till Summer for a big update will ensure no one gets upset I'm taking 10 years to develop this game, it's been 5 already! Oops!

What an odd translation. I can do better than that.

However, my plans have changed a fair bit since then. I spent about a week and half on Mykocks manor, plus a little over two weeks implementing the new cafeteria uniforms. So, that's about four weeks I’ve managed to put myself behind schedule already. I am also going to need a little more time than I initially anticipated introducing Sally's new outfit. Plus, to be entirely honest, I struggled a bit over the writing for Samantha’s content and got stuck over that for a little while. So, all I can say at the moment is the next update is delayed by about six weeks or so. On the positive side, more development time just means a bigger and better update and version 0.16 is shaping up to be a good one.

Translation: I was working on Samantha's content and unexpectedly hit a wall. While the overall plan is there, some detail kept blocking progress. While trying to deal with it, I started experiencing a starting burnout. To snap out of it, I decided to work on something completely different. Something less important in order to get away from the pressure of everything having to match the storyline perfectly. The choice ended up being Mykocks manor. After that I worked on uniforms, again to deal with something other than storywriting. I have now recovered from the writing stall, but the detour has delayed the next release by 6 weeks. Also having had time to think, some plans changed because I came up with better ideas on some aspects of the story/graphics/whatever.

My take on this is that this is perfectly normal for game development. Been there, done that. You can crunch up to a release, b but in general development is a marathon, not a sprint. Run too fast on average and you risk falling over and not recover. When feeling the first symptoms of burnout, or just getting upset about getting stuck on something, taking a break from the problem is often a good idea. Going back to it 3-4 weeks later will let you look at the issue with fresh eyes and it might not even be a problem anymore.

I see nothing negative in the update. What a read is that Altos is human (big shock I admit. Who would have thought?) and he is making mature decisions, which will benefit development in the long run. Diverting from a schedule is sometimes needed to avoid unreasonable workload or substandard quality. Often a plan is an overall plan and once you do the actual work, you encounter all the details, including those not considered when the overall plan was made. This is the main reason why development rarely goes precisely as planned.