Lemma Soft Forums

I think that raising questions about an engine, especially one that runs as a service, is a fair thing. While you're not obligated to answer any of the questions, third parties who are considering your service might want to know the answers to those questions - many of them seem at least reasonable, and something people should consider before turning over some of the rights to their work.

The android port of Ren'Py hasn't started yet, except for some early prep work. I'm waiting for 6.11 to come out before I consider a port. (And there might be some other stuff before it as well. Like, me getting a better phone.)

I've considered what it would take to do a web-server hosted VN engine. (Especially after the iphone platform was locked down.) So far, no one has spoken about the ongoing hosting costs that are involved with something like this - that's an important part of the model. I'm also kinda curious about what sorts of requests involve a round-trip to the server (which involves latency and potential disconnection).

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming" - Theodore Roosevelt

No one said it would have to be stored on your servers (or is Lemma? nvm). Many sites would be happy to host games as long as they can show advertisements in the background, and as a developer that seems like a fair trade.

Something like this would almost certainly require a smart server, capable of running real server-side code. This almost certainly means a VPS of some sort - which, while not horribly expensive, is something that's going to have to be accounted for.

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming" - Theodore Roosevelt

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If you are seriously of the mind, as a supposed businessman, that you have "nothing to prove", then you will not get very far. Business is all about proving to your buyers that we need your product and then proving that your product can provide what you claim it will. You claim to have no time, and yet you're sitting here responding to every comment us three have written.

I personally have not explicitly said "your offer is no good". I've only asked what any sensible game creator would ask when thinking of distribution: "What are you giving ME that will be worth X% of my group's total profits? Why is it worth X% to allow you to use our equally difficult, sweated and teared over piece?" You posted here with the very high and mighty sense of importance that you claim I've got (while not addressing a single one of the several points I made), implying that your engine is something worth being paid for, that your offer is worth taking, and then ignore all efforts to find out what we'd actually get for that money.

This post was directly linked to me because one of the associates to my group thought it might be useful to us, and upon reading and looking over the site, there's no indication that you can do anything we can't already do. Even if it comes along that there was something, I would not work with you because of the unprofessional attitude you've displayed.

Good luck to you.

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Check out the new interactive media project, Mitsumata(c). Follow 8 colorful characters in a story full of drama, horror, all sexualities and exciting gameplay~!

Development blog's up! Visit!

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I didn't start up my post with "there's still a chance." My aim has been clear from the very beginning: "What are you doing for me that should cost me X%?" I assumed that there was something you didn't say, or something I might've been missing from a tendency to skim quickly. Instead, I saw poor response to critique and attitude when people asked for a clear synopsis of what you are selling.

You then tell me I'm "high and mighty" and "obviously better off than you", and "why do I even care about your offer if I already have what you're selling", completely ignoring the fact that not only I, but most of the people here already have what you're selling. "I even cared" because I was considering programming speed and exposure of my group's project. Those comments are not professional, and downright silly to make to people who did post here.

You claim you have no time to answer the detailed questions and then literally moments after I post, you're here, still not answering the questions, but managing to throw retorts.

Are you saying that you cannot see why someone with the kind of work you likely want will pass you by based on your comments here?

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Check out the new interactive media project, Mitsumata(c). Follow 8 colorful characters in a story full of drama, horror, all sexualities and exciting gameplay~!

Development blog's up! Visit!

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Case in point.

Good luck to you, again.

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Check out the new interactive media project, Mitsumata(c). Follow 8 colorful characters in a story full of drama, horror, all sexualities and exciting gameplay~!

Development blog's up! Visit!

Let me just ask people to keep this discussion about the engine, technology, and business aspects. Commenting on these things is fine - but commenting on people's behavior is off topic. (If you really feel offended by someone's behavior, click the report button, the red exclamation point.)

This goes for everyone involved - please don't make me start moderating posters. I'm lazy, and it takes time that could be better spent improving Ren'Py. (Or sleeping, for that matter.)

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming" - Theodore Roosevelt

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Well, one big reason is that nowhere in this thread had you actually linked to anything other than a YouTube video and a Word document that I can't open because I don't have Word. (Pro tip: make stuff like this available in a format that everyone - on EVERY modern operating system - can view out of the box. Plain text is best, RTF is doable and if you really need all that formatting and layout stuff you can probably stretch to PDF.)

So I've found your website, so here is some advice:

- Please, get a graphic artist to re-skin it, it doesn't exactly scream 'professional' right now - especially with the animated adverts for dodgy things like Evony.

- Making people sign up to see a demo is going to put a fair number of people off before you've even had the chance to impress them.

- Speaking of which, your signup process has 'sexual orientation' as a required field?! I can think of some people who'll be more than a little wary of that.


Now, your tutorial game isn't particularly impressive - am I supposed to take it that this demonstrates the current state of your engine? There's no hover-highlighting for things like menu item selections, there's no transitions between poses, the text sometimes overflows the box and sometimes I'm left with an empty text box I need to click to advance through for no apparent reason. Not to mention that I have to click the text box specifically to advance - at first, I thought it was just broken. And there's a sound on/off switch, but I don't hear anything...?

And given that I had to sit there and watch while Tyrone's sprite disappeared from the screen and loaded scanline by scanline in front of me when he changed poses, I get the impression that you refused to answer my question about pre-caching and low-speed connections because you haven't done any work in that area at all.


I did try it on my mobile phone, and it has problems. I get the BG and can click through dialogue, but Tyrone's sprite never shows up... and once I get to a menu, I click and click on the options and it refuses to advance. Not to mention that it's using exactly the same size assets as for desktop delivery, so it's pretty much impossible to play, I'd have to pan left and right constantly to even read the dialogue. Also it gave me an error saying Flash 8 wasn't installed... don't I remember hearing that you can't run Flash on iPhone/iPad?



Sorry, but given the current state of your engine, I'm not impressed in the least, and certainly wouldn't want my name associated with it. And please, if all I wanted to do was disparage you, I'd have just left it at "I tried your engine, it was shit"; all of those points are things I'm advising you to improve if you seriously want to try and sell this to people.







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Honestly, you're missing the problem. You might not have any latency issues at the datacentre, but people rarely do; this doesn't stop a customer from trying to use your website over dial-up, or (more likely, given the sales approach you're taking) over a low-strength mobile phone signal, where their connection is low-speed and potentially keeps dropping out. If you want to really sell your games in the mobile space, you seriously need to do something about this and not just wave your arms and say "but it's Amazon, they'll make it really fast for us".



Actually, I think it's at least a little bit on-topic in a conversation like this. Topogae is basically trying to sell us something, his attitude towards his potential customers is going to affect that. So it's relevant advice for us to say "you're being too defensive and barbed", because he'll have trouble getting customers if he's like that with everybody.



Unless you've been getting people to hand over NDAs in private before you'll tell them anything, there's effectively no difference, you know? "No compelling reason to answer in public" sounds a lot like "I don't have answers", I'm afraid.

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I think if you use one of the CDN services like Amazon or Google App Engine, that won't be a problem.
I also know a friend of mine runs a highly successful REAL-TIME MMO in flash, and has just 1 single server. I don't think latency/downtime issues can be really a big problem if you go with the right hardware/service.
What I'm not really sure, speaking about the idea of having VN on the web, is about the effective selling potential. I've run several experiments in the Flash market and people weren't even interested in just trying FREE games...

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