I'll try out what you mentioned regarding the and/or logic, as I don't know off the top of my head whether the use of brackets applies in renpy. I don't think it does, but if I'm wrong then I'd be happy to apply it. I remember trying to make it work and coming to the conclusion that it was just easier for me to split them into different parts. I'll check on this later.Conditionals evaluate in order according to the operator priority. (Applies to all languages, most notably C)
If you want to enforce your own order, you must use parenthesis.
Likea and (b or c)/(a and b) or c. The parenthesis have higher priority when evaluating the statement.
Typically, parenthesis have highest priority, followed by exponentiation, multiplication/division, addition/subtraction, comparison operators (>=, ==, is, etc.), bitwise operators (&, ^, |, etc.), logical operators (and, or, etc.), and almost always ending with assignment operators (i.e. the = symbol). This changes with each language, you'll need to read Python documentation to know the specifics, but usually if you use a lot of parenthesis this ultimately doesn't matter ─ almost every language out there evaluates parenthesis over everything else.
I... am not sure. For starters, 16 girls with 3 routes is already a minimum of 4,096 combinations (aka. 16³). That sounds crazy enough in my book, even with the math obviously wrong (all combinations would be 3×3×3×3.... aka. 3¹⁶ which is 43 millions ─ but then you don't need all of them to interact at once). Besides, this assumes the girls are the focus ─ if they aren't, then it is indeed more manageable (except you'll end up with thousands of dialog variations which work exactly the same story-wise).
i.e. Unless you have a roadmap/flowchart ready, then you can actually limit the routes (and see the actual planned complexity before committing any resources) and keep the differences to a minimum (like changing terms in the same dialog and calling a day).
Do you have one, at least? (No need to share, not that we would mind if you did).
With regard to the scope of the whole thing, I think there is some misunderstanding around what I'm actually planning to do, or even wanting to do. There are 7 main girls. Each of those main girls have 3 routes. The side girls don't have these routes, and I have them there to fill in backgrounds, and also to do fun stuff with when I come up with it. These 3 routes for the main girls are distinct, but eventually intersect. We are not talking about 7^3 different possible stories here. The majority of the branching comes in the route selection phase, which is what's being displayed in the game right now. Once we're at the the point where you've selected your route with each girl, things become simpler, but still distinct in places.
I read your thing about the mathematics of it all, but to be honest it seemed to come from a marketability perspecitive, which has never really been my priority. People are free to have concerns about the future of the project, and those people are free not to support it. Being told I'm at risk of burning out has always been a strange one to me because I've seen cases of that, and all of those cases have been either someone making something of far more limited scope than what I've already made, or someone trying to make something of a much larger scope than what I even have planned. I feel like people do misinterpret the scope of what I'm actually making sometimes. As for why they abandon the games, maybe it's lack of recognition for their work, maybe it's how much work they have to do, maybe it's something else. No clue. All I know is I love the support I've had so far, and I like making the game. I wanna see it finished. It's not gonna be quick, but I can't see myself abandoning it any time soon. This shit is a part of me now.
All of that said, those with doubts are free to continue to just obeserve things for free from this website, albeit slightly behind those who support, preferably.
