Archived Summertime Saga: Incest mod(s). Solutions?

[manneychin]

Let's move the discussion about SS incest mod(s) to this dedicated thread.

Problem: Since v0.15 SS requires an incest mod and it has become very difficult to get one done

Details:

1. 60+ work hours are required based on
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   's and
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   's experiences over the last year
2. Writing skills are needed to adjust multiple story threads and not only restore incest but also introduce it in newly added story lines
   • Or we risk ending up with a nonsense story seemingly spewed out by Google Translate. If you ever played games translated to ENG via GT you should know how bad it can get and that's without considering that in this case some story lines need to be creatively added in.
3. Python + Ren'Py coding skills are needed because SS code base has become quite complex (SS mods made over the past year have proven to be a magnet for game breaking bugs)
4. No support can be expected from DC which makes all the previous points much more difficult than they need to be. DC now clearly writes & designs new story threads as well as changes to old threads without baking incest in. This means there isn't much to restore.

Solution attempts that seem unsustainable:

1. You must be registered to see the links
   was able to put out a reportedly good incest mod for v0.16.1 soon after its release. I assumed this was the beginning of a pattern and hoped it's one supported by DC but instead bossapplesauce suddenly
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   on Nov 16th so hope he's OK but not that he'll keep pumping out mods for every SS version
2. You must be registered to see the links
   tried to piece together a mod but it's a very simplistic approach (word replacements) that's far from a decent solution. The effort required is just too big and I fully understand that.

Steps to a solution:

1. Find a similar case of a game that required a mod to be attractive to some players. How was that mod sustained?
2. Paying for the mod is OK with me and not an impossible problem.
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   was able to find a way to sustain himself off Patreon and I'm far more likely to pay for this kind of SS mod than I am to repay DC for being Patreon's Mind Police dirtiest whore (possibly in a tie with DS). Something like
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   looks OK to me.
3. The main SS thread should have its incest tag removed as it clearly does not apply and it's doubtful it can even be properly reintroduced
4. Would love to track (some?) mods via
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   page. I would basically not even see when SS makes a release (filter by incest tag) and only see when the pairing incest mod makes a release.

What say you?

Later edit (Jan 4th, 2019): A good incest mod from @robertj :

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[regueton1]

Why not implement it in the same way as in this?

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Download the patch:

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and put it in the /game/ folder

- OR -

Open the developer console by pressing Shift+O and type: set_special(True)

When properly patched, the title screen will show 'Taboo Edition'; if you didn't do it properly, it won't change, so double-check that the title screen changes (see below). You only have to do this once, the changes should be persistent and will carry over to new releases of the game.

 

[thestickman]

Why not implement it in the same way as in this?

You must be registered to see the links

Download the patch:

You must be registered to see the links

and put it in the /game/ folder

- OR -

Open the developer console by pressing Shift+O and type: set_special(True)

When properly patched, the title screen will show 'Taboo Edition'; if you didn't do it properly, it won't change, so double-check that the title screen changes (see below). You only have to do this once, the changes should be persistent and will carry over to new releases of the game.

That still requires all of the work that was listed in the OP, which is the problem. The method of activating it is a moot point. There isn't just some magical switch you can flip for any game to enable incest.

The main issue is that, almost all Patreon games remove the incest in order to meet Patreon rules and standards, but incest is still the true focus and they offer incest patches. However, Summertime Saga is unlike this - they've actually put work and effort into removing the incest, going as far as to completely rewrite the story to have it (mostly) make sense in a non-incest scenario. Most games just replace mom/sister/etc with landlady, roommate, etc and then the story doesn't really make much sense because the story was written with the terms mom/sister/etc in mind and they expect you to use the patch that restores the incest terms. But Summertime Saga has completely rewritten all of this in order to have the sentence structure makes sense independent of the incest terms, so a simple find-and-replace will not work.

 

[Wankdorf]

Wait, what? Summertime Sage removed all the incest? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Didn't play for a long time because restarting after every patch is so tiresome.

 

[j4yj4m]

Wait, what? Summertime Sage removed all the incest? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Didn't play for a long time because restarting after every patch is so tiresome.

Yes, the incest will be back as soon as there's either an alternative to patreon in that regard or once the game is done. Until that there's no official support for any kind of incest by the team and users basically have to help themselves with patches.

 

[Fission Mailed]

There's basically 2 ways to change the story in RenPy.

1. Code it to take over entire sections with the improved story taking over
2. Code it to be more 'on the fly' with replacing lines of text

The first works the best to the reader but has to be redone for EVERY game release because Dev's always change a little bit of everything and this method would reuse old 'buggy' code. With something as complex as SS is, it'll take a team of people a week to properly get everything, and they would have to redo the effort for each release and then bugfix release (or just delay until DC makes the bugfix release).
The second is quick & easy but unreliable. There are times when you want to replace [Name] with [Family_Name] and other times you don't, this method has no simple way to differentiate between the 2 and can make the story more like it was translated by GT...as I found out with the TP incest restoration.

The LP method is...not really a method. It's just people submitting their mod to whomever is in charge of that section to post.
Sisterly Lust has a variable in-game because the dev chose to keep & just hide incest in it, same with other games with a similar simple variable change (DoD did the same, only to change the variable you downloaded a patch to change it instead of opening the console). DC decided not to go the easy route and much as we think it's stupid....he's in the top 5 sitewide for Patreon so he's doing something right in the long run.

 

[obiwan]

Wait, what? Summertime Sage removed all the incest? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Didn't play for a long time because restarting after every patch is so tiresome.

I had a feeling the incest patching might stop when 0.17 got released as instead of just using the method where you swapped out names and titles like the previous mod, somebody has to actually rewrite and mod the new content entirely and given how unstable the code is it might be challenge but then again I haven't coded in years.

Tis sad really, thr incest was one of the best aspects of the game for me personally.

 

[gunderson]

I want the incest patch as much as anyone, but this is clearly DC's problem.

Whether he wants to (or even can) admit it or not, a decent number of his patrons are supporting him because they expect incest patches to his game. Some of those people are going to stop funding him soon if new updates aren't fixed (I just did, for example, for exactly that reason). So it would be in his best interest for his team to use some of the money donated to his campaign for development time on a good incest patch for 17.1 and to upload it anonymously here, given that that is clearly what a goodly number of his patrons would want their funding used for.

As others have said, a quick find-and-replace isn't too hard for a game requiring a simple fix to patch in incest. But when the scale of this work requires another fucking funding campaign just to make the mod, I think that's the time when we have to consider how far we're willing to bend over backwards just to keep up the appearance of DC's hands being clean in this whole affair.

 

[manneychin]

... he's in the top 5 sitewide for Patreon so he's doing something right in the long run.

This is really THE starting point of the discussion herein.

Considering how obvious it has become that the amount of effort to put incest back in SS is very high, let's see if there are any 3rd party solutions or if instead we should forget about it.

I want the incest patch as much as anyone, but this is clearly DC's problem....

I'm 100% DC will not restore incest in SS.

When he said he might it was under pressure to manage bad PR when it could really harm him, from those who were likely to feel betrayed but he conditioned the restore by events that are realistically impossible (e.g. Patreon changing their mind or another platform that is similarly (i.e. read "more") profitable allowing it).

Why would DC ever throw away $50+k to take a month and work on restoring incest in a finalized SS (years from now, mind you) when doing so comes with a major risk of being booted from Patreon and seeing his life destroyed as Patreon is his only lofty revenue source? Nobody can realistically believe this might happen and even if it somehow happens, who would be even mildly content to wait for years?

So let's see if there's a way to solve it despite DC as that's clearly the only path worth considering at this point.

 

[j4yj4m]

Why would DC ever throw away $50+k to take a month and work on restoring incest in a finalized SS (years from now, mind you) when doing so comes with a major risk of being booted from Patreon and seeing his life destroyed as Patreon is his only lofty revenue source? Nobody can realistically believe this might happen and even if it somehow happens, who would be even mildly content to wait for years?.

Well, once the game is done he'll move on to his next project and can pull SS from patreon, while his patreons will have decide if they want to stay for the new thing or quit. I'm sure there'll be some kind of transition phase anyway, like the first 2 or 3 updates of the new game being released before the last SS ones. After that SS won't need funding anymore and thus he can host it for free on his homepage. That's a viable model as some other devs have shown. That said, I'm sure it's the only hope we've got right now. Thanks to the rules of the payment providers there are no workable alternatives to patreon without Visa/Master/Paypal/etc. and thus he'll have to stick to their terms.

Contentwise I'm sure there are many who like the game and don't care about incest enough to quit because of that.

@ gunderson:
It's important to consider how big the game is and that he basically risks his whole project and future projects in case somebody finds out about some kind of connection. He said many times that he won't change is mind on that and thus he's likely willing to take the hit.

 

[Zogg]

Just blame the patreon staff OK, f+ them all

 

[gunderson]

Just blame the patreon staff OK, f+ them all

Dunno, that seems a little shortsighted. Let's also blame risk-averse devs and the narcs who turn people in for scaaaaaary fictional sex.

 

[ChippyP]

Honestly, the only viable solution I see is to wait for the game to be complete, or abandoned, whenever either of those may end up being. Trying to keep up and redo such a large workload every update is completely unsustainable, and it's really unlikely that DC has any intentions of going back after the amount of effort that's been put into undoing the game's original setting.

If a team were to come together to try and actively mod the game during its development, my advice would be to start their own project instead, paying homage to what SS started out as, and going in its own direction.

 

[Mab's Thrall22]

So, I am wondering who is doing the patch on lewdpatcher? Is it someone from his dev team or a fan? I know it's supposed to be anonymous, but if it someone from his dev team, then that means all is not lost. I do agree that DC will not move from Patreon while making $50+K a month. That is a ridiculous amount of money for an independent adult game creator. As far as taking hit, it makes me wonder how many people are there for the incest? If in some hypothetical scenario all of the people supporting him thinking incest content will be patched in just left, how much money will he actually lose? My fear is not enough to leave Patreon when an alternative shows up. By the way, an alternative for Patreon that will cater to adult content creators is coming. I have been watching their development over the last year and even communicated with some of the developers. In case you all don't know about it, it is Sponsorion. It started out by getting funded on indiegogo last year, and they have been developing the site ever since. They are not up and running yet, but with the amount of time and effort being put into developing this site, I feel it will finally be a place adult content creators can freely create content without much censorship. There will be some content that will not be allowed, but for the most part everything else will be. They will not allow real life porn, because of all sorts of legal issues verifying the people posting content are of legal age to do so. In that same vain, they will not allow loli/shota content, mainly because it is too much of a legal gray area, which could get nasty fast. Everything else, though, is allowed and will not be censored. They even found a payment processor that is reasonable, especially concerning things considered "high risk", like adult content. So, I am quite excited about it. I hope they are up and running sometime early next year, but right now no time frame is posted. So, I will continue to wait patiently until it launches.

 

[Mab's Thrall22]

Dunno, that seems a little shortsighted. Let's also blame risk-averse devs and the narcs who turn people in for scaaaaaary fictional sex.

Yes, I agree with you 100%. There are several devs who kept their games incest patch friendly after the crackdown. There are some who even kept their games going outside of Patreon. I know there are alot of people who have talked shit about Mr. Dots, but him and his team have been keeping Dating My Daughter going after being basically kicked off of Patreon. I mean they had to delete their whole page and start from scratch with Melody, which is a great game, but personally doesn't hold a candle to DMD. I know Patreon blamed Paypal, and there may be some truth to that, but they also rolled over pretty hard, hence the content crackdowns. Anyways, the biggest people I blame for the crackdowns are the hypocrites who played these games and then reported them, and they probably though they doing some type of justice in doing so, but were probably jacking to the content they were reporting to their Patreon overlords. Ugh, so frustrating, I am going to play some Sisterly Lust now, with all of the great incest content.

 

[Maid Lain]

@iderama

I only see two possible solutions:
1. Wait and hope that some poor soul spends 60+ hours reading every line of dialog for all the family members and manually makes the changes for an incest mod.
2. When you start a new game set Debbie's name to Mom and Jenny's name to sister, and ignore all the writing mistakes this will cause.

For solution #1, the changes would have to be done manually, there's really no way to automate it so that all the dialog is correct. And it would have to be remade for every major update (bug fix updates would require little or no changes). Also I agree that there is 0% chance of DC ever making an incest patch for the game, even when the game is finished.


So really there's only one good solution, so the discussion should be about how to achieve that solution. Figure out a way to bring back the b0ss and then harass him enough till he spends 10+ days again making the incest mod lol.

 

[User_51567]

Look,
I have no problem with re-writing it all, have no problem spending 50+ hours looking at text and making it into a coherent incest story like the original.
Have enough time to do that while rendering things for my own game and between coding for myself, and can be done in less then a week at my rate.

However, because i have been working for my game for at least 3000+ hours i discovered 1 thing... I absolutely hate coding and programming.

So i would happily offer to do the reading, correcting and writing part, but somebody else will have to implement it in the game/mod and test it of course.
Also that's because i have been working in Unity, so my knowledge of Renpy is limited at best.
So think about it, and if you are interested then give me a shout .

 

[Mab's Thrall22]

@JadabaJD

I love that your are willing to do this. Unfortunately, I lack the skills to code or program anything. I don't personally know anybody who could do it either, but I do know that Teq on the main SS thread has cobbled together a patch using previous version patches. I was able to play a little last night, and already encountered a small error with Aunt Diane being only reffered to as Aunt when MC is addressing her, but it still holds alot of promise. Hope to play more tonight and see if anything else jumps out at me. So maybe get ahold of him and you two could work together on it? I mean DC's current work rate is one update every three to four months, so you do have some time .

 

[CsoiretgeFsM]

some poor soul spends 60+ hours reading every line of dialog for all the family members

I've been doing that for bossapplesauce's patches since before 0.16. It helps because I have some kind of OCD regarding getting everything perfect.

60+ hours reading every line of dialog for all the family members is nothing. In 0.16 I read the dialogue for every character. Every character that has dialogue. Including every cutscene that has exposition. Literally. Just so I could help bossapplesauce iron out ALL inconcistencies regarding the changes made thanks to motherfucking CENSORSHIP-treon (I'm talking about "PAY"-treon).

I fucking hate patreon so much I could burn a hole through solid concrete just from sheer lividness from that place.

The only thing I truly regret is not being able to code it or I'd do it myself and actually contribute something to this place.

 

[strenif]

It seems like the writing is less of an issue than the coding in that after the Jenny patch there wouldn't be much to do writing wise for say an Eve patch. The fact that'd you effectively have to reinvent the wheel every patch because the code is going to be a little different each time.... Arrg

If the game started off with no incest I'd still like it but this is like watching an anime where the voice actors are changed half way through. If .16 is the last version of the game with incest I think after the Jenny patch DC's membership will take a hit. He'll be fine I'm sure but I'd guess a fair number of people are going to bail.