VN Ren'Py Summer's Gone [S1 Steam + DLC] [Oceanlab]

[RNasc4444]

Trying to drive the Mods crazy .
View attachment 4671338

Simply trying to prove a fucking point. If people are so butthurt by "trolls" and "haters" they can easily ignore, to the point of bringing down heavy moderation on this thread and sap all the fun out of it, I too can play that game. Do you see the latest PaxHadrian post? I wonder where it went

I don't ignore people or report innocuous posts (or fucking barely any at all) because I despise censorship and don't want the mod team hovering the threads I frequent. But if someone else insists on sanitizing this space then fuck it. I'll join in on the shitshow.

I love Summer's Gone! Good game! Zara is . Pls no delete/edit, mods!

 

[AlexFXR]

- Writing SG without WiaB would mean Ocean might put himself in a corner where WiaB becomes inconsistent, because SG is after ie writing too much about Katie in SG without developing WiaB gives away WIab's story, but also ties Ocean's hands to a certain canon ending. Right now he can make sure that SG doesn't cause conflicts with WiaB.

On the contrary, SG and Wiab will be connected by only one universe, and that's where their similarities end. They can't be combined, because then it won't be a game, but a novella. And if you make a game, you'll have to calculate all the options for players to choose from, which is just a gigantic job that Ocean can't do.

- The normal way to write a series is to start from the first story, toing a prequel after almost always leads to a boring story with little surprise.

That's right, Wiab is that boring prequel you're talking about. It was boring from the start, because of that Ocean abandoned it and started doing everything over again. But the new Wiab is not far from the old one, it remains just as boring. I still wonder why Ocean is messing around with this failed game, because it won't get better and won't be able to achieve success like SG.

If he can put out a 7000 render update in 18 months, he can put out a 2333 render update every 6 months.

You are counting incorrectly, every 4 months. About 2 months will be spent on creating renders if Ocean works at a normal pace, and the rest of the time on programming, this is more than enough. But if you turn on the milking mode, then you can do it in 8 months.

 

[BobTheDuck]

On the contrary, SG and Wiab will be connected by only one universe, and that's where their similarities end. They can't be combined, because then it won't be a game, but a novella. And if you make a game, you'll have to calculate all the options for players to choose from, which is just a gigantic job that Ocean can't do.

I'm not talking about combining them. But the story of SG is contingent on some events from WiaB - if Ocean writes those events into SG and THEN goes and completes WiaB, his hands are tied. Characters in SG have spoken about the way events turned out. I see it as one meta story just like there are series of games that each have their own ending, but feed the start of the next. It's not a linear continuation, because of a different MC, but it's the same principle. This is why it is easier to do the first story in time, then the second later. But that hasn't happened, even though WiaB is the first game, and the one Ocean started first. Now he hes to play leapfrog between the two, development wise.

That's right, Wiab is that boring prequel you're talking about. It was boring from the start, because of that Ocean abandoned it and started doing everything over again. But the new Wiab is not far from the old one, it remains just as boring. I still wonder why Ocean is messing around with this failed game, because it won't get better and won't be able to achieve success like SG.

It's not boring to me. You might find it boring, but this isn't a fact, just your opinion.

You are counting incorrectly, every 4 months. About 2 months will be spent on creating renders if Ocean works at a normal pace, and the rest of the time on programming, this is more than enough. But if you turn on the milking mode, then you can do it in 8 months.

I'm well aware that Ocean could do it faster, but I'm basing my idea on the current rate of progress for WiaB and SG, not a theoretical maximum if he only eats soup for 15 minutes a day, goes to the gym for 45min, and sleeps for 6 hours 15 min. Talking about what is possible vs extrapolating on how he's doing now is ver different. If he moves at this pace he is now, there's no reason that we couldn't get two updates a year for each game. But, I won't hold my breath, I'll wait to see how the next updates are to play.

 

[AlexFXR]

I'm not talking about combining them. But the story of SG is contingent on some events from WiaB

I can't understand what you're talking about, your words contradict each other. If there is no unification, then nothing depends on Wiab, at most some events can be mentioned in SG, as an example of a common game universe. But if SG depends on events from Wiab that the player controls, then these 2 games are connected.

It's not boring to me. You might find it boring, but this isn't a fact, just your opinion.

I actually didn't express my opinion on the game, but took the overall rating from Patrion before Wiab was kicked out. It had a rating there like a half-abandoned game. Which is not far from the truth. If you're asking my opinion on Wiab, I wasn't interested in it, I remained indifferent. I occasionally follow the game because of the connection with SG. Although to be honest, the last scene when they went to the bar seemed very boring to me. There was a lot of senseless chatter that I had to fast-forward.

I'm well aware that Ocean could do it faster, but I'm basing my idea on the current rate of progress for WiaB and SG, not a theoretical maximum if he only eats soup for 15 minutes a day, goes to the gym for 45min, and sleeps for 6 hours 15 min. Talking about what is possible vs extrapolating on how he's doing now is ver different. If he moves at this pace he is now, there's no reason that we couldn't get two updates a year for each game. But, I won't hold my breath, I'll wait to see how the next updates are to play.

I took the usual comfortable speed of Ocean's work. If I took the maximum speed of work, the number would have increased by 2-2.5 times.

 

[Deez6902]

I can't understand what you're talking about, your words contradict each other. If there is no unification, then nothing depends on Wiab, at most some events can be mentioned in SG, as an example of a common game universe. But if SG depends on events from Wiab that the player controls, then these 2 games are connected.

I actually didn't express my opinion on the game, but took the overall rating from Patrion before Wiab was kicked out. It had a rating there like a half-abandoned game. Which is not far from the truth. If you're asking my opinion on Wiab, I wasn't interested in it, I remained indifferent. I occasionally follow the game because of the connection with SG. Although to be honest, the last scene when they went to the bar seemed very boring to me. There was a lot of senseless chatter that I had to fast-forward.


I took the usual comfortable speed of Ocean's work. If I took the maximum speed of work, the number would have increased by 2-2.5 times.

I think at some point somethings gonna break between the two games and the development speed. I think you can get away with doing two games just not at this pace even if they were ambitious updates it's inevitably hard on Ocean and the community as a whole. Hopefully something changes for the betterment of the games, dev, and us.

 

[alanrock]

Development speed will not change until Oceanlab has a dozen people. These are the laws of physics.

If remakes are over (Debatable), we should see faster progress in both game's stories. I would like to see the WiAB story advance beyond the old version someday.

 

[Ilhares]

How many weeks till Summer's Gone?

None, mate. Didn't you get the memo? She's already gone.

 

[alanrock]

None, mate. Didn't you get the memo? She's already gone.

I understand that, but I was referring to the seasons since spring had just started the other day.

 

[BobTheDuck]

I can't understand what you're talking about, your words contradict each other. If there is no unification, then nothing depends on Wiab, at most some events can be mentioned in SG, as an example of a common game universe. But if SG depends on events from Wiab that the player controls, then these 2 games are connected.

No, my words don't contradict themselves, you're just not understanding. SG is based on events that have already happened in WiaB. Events in SG are affected by this (the Zane presence). So they are both part of the same overall meta narative. That is what the series is. But SG has a different protagonist, and it remains to be seen if Willi gets any meaningful role in SG. Already we have the conditions that the player can't chose something that leads to Katie's death, and that Ayua is a Zane, Leia, Willi, Kaite, Zoey and Emilio survive whatever happens. Choices that could impact those facts for SG can't be taken, or the game is not connected. It is that simple. The more OCean writes about what happened 20 years earlier in SG, without having finished WiaB, the fewer meaningful choices he can write into WiaB. If for example, Katie does a big reveal of the turf war that leads to the Zane's gaining a business empire that includes the college, he gives away the plot of WiaB, and makes WiaB a kinetic novel. In order for the WiaB choices to be meaningful, he can't give away too much of what happened before in SG.

Now, we know Ocean has said that decisions from WiaB at some point WILL be carried over to SG. I honestly don't think he'll do that though. He has to have coded it in from the start of SG, and he has to have written all the variables in from a finished WiaB. WiaB isn't finished, and SG doesn't have any code connecting the saves that I know about, or any flags related to pre-existing choices. It would be a massive rework to retrofit the changes, unless they are cosmetic script based 'lore' (ie what happened before just being recounted to the new generation)

If I consider a AAA game such as the ME trilogy, each game builds on the previous game, choices made in the first game affect the third. But the series started from the first game, and was developed in a linear fashion. Ocean made a mistake in some ways allowing development on SG before fiishing WiaB. A good example of this is Steven Erickson and Ian Esslemont, writing a series together. Erickson did 6 books before Esslement did his first, so the series is entirely flavoured to Erickson. The idea is that two people can create a more vibrant world, but it requires people to work as a team. In SG's case, that didn't happen, and Ocean picked up the slack. So now we're in a situation where the development is happening in parallel.

I actually didn't express my opinion on the game, but took the overall rating from Patrion before Wiab was kicked out. It had a rating there like a half-abandoned game. Which is not far from the truth. If you're asking my opinion on Wiab, I wasn't interested in it, I remained indifferent. I occasionally follow the game because of the connection with SG. Although to be honest, the last scene when they went to the bar seemed very boring to me. There was a lot of senseless chatter that I had to fast-forward.

No, boring is a personal opinion. We will never know what would have happened if Ocean hadn't repeatedly paused WiaB's development for SG. Patrons were bored by waiting, as they are now. Helen carrying a gun and Willi an Axe in new WiaB previews is far from boring. But everyone has their preferences, it's no big deal that you find a story boring. There are many patrons who just want Bella, Sasha or Nami lewds and don't really care about the story even of SG. They just like the eye candy. I happen to like the story of the new WiaB far more than the story of SG, but currently the characters of SG have better emotional complexity, so I do like SG a lot as well.

If you're fast forwarding the 'chatter' how do you even know the details of the story though? The 'chatter' is where the story predominantly happens, the chatter explains what you see on the renders. I'm guessing you fast forwarded through the book club? This would explain why you don't know all the connections/insinuations between the games.

I took the usual comfortable speed of Ocean's work. If I took the maximum speed of work, the number would have increased by 2-2.5 times.

See this is where you are wrong. Speed won't always be comfortable. Just like he's rendering (foolishly in my opinion) scenes with 32 characters. This will have effects on the basketball games. 32 is more than enough for two teams and coaches but he'd better not do too many bystanders. Or he acts with sense and stitches renders together. But these moments in the game with large numbers of characters at full complexity will slow his comupter down. So look at the current dev time for both games and divide the number of renders currently by the number of days. That will give you the average Ocean speed. He'll have just as many hiccups. THere is no comfortable speed - because we don't know if one update (the gala when it happens, or a big basketball match) will have 32 characters the whole update (I Hope not) and that WILL slow the game development down. So I'll stand by my words. Two updates a year for both games would be an amazing result, and is within the capabilities of Ocean to deliver. He can do faster, but he'll get overambitious in some ways - simply because he's always trying to impress. His efforts to do too much make the game better, but also hamstring him.

 

[HarryDubois420]

No, my words don't contradict themselves, you're just not understanding. SG is based on events that have already happened in WiaB. Events in SG are affected by this (the Zane presence). So they are both part of the same overall meta narative. That is what the series is. But SG has a different protagonist, and it remains to be seen if Willi gets any meaningful role in SG. Already we have the conditions that the player can't chose something that leads to Katie's death, and that Ayua is a Zane, Leia, Willi, Kaite, Zoey and Emilio survive whatever happens. Choices that could impact those facts for SG can't be taken, or the game is not connected. It is that simple. The more OCean writes about what happened 20 years earlier in SG, without having finished WiaB, the fewer meaningful choices he can write into WiaB. If for example, Katie does a big reveal of the turf war that leads to the Zane's gaining a business empire that includes the college, he gives away the plot of WiaB, and makes WiaB a kinetic novel. In order for the WiaB choices to be meaningful, he can't give away too much of what happened before in SG.

Now, we know Ocean has said that decisions from WiaB at some point WILL be carried over to SG. I honestly don't think he'll do that though. He has to have coded it in from the start of SG, and he has to have written all the variables in from a finished WiaB. WiaB isn't finished, and SG doesn't have any code connecting the saves that I know about, or any flags related to pre-existing choices. It would be a massive rework to retrofit the changes, unless they are cosmetic script based 'lore' (ie what happened before just being recounted to the new generation)

If I consider a AAA game such as the ME trilogy, each game builds on the previous game, choices made in the first game affect the third. But the series started from the first game, and was developed in a linear fashion. Ocean made a mistake in some ways allowing development on SG before fiishing WiaB. A good example of this is Steven Erickson and Ian Esslemont, writing a series together. Erickson did 6 books before Esslement did his first, so the series is entirely flavoured to Erickson. The idea is that two people can create a more vibrant world, but it requires people to work as a team. In SG's case, that didn't happen, and Ocean picked up the slack. So now we're in a situation where the development is happening in parallel.



No, boring is a personal opinion. We will never know what would have happened if Ocean hadn't repeatedly paused WiaB's development for SG. Patrons were bored by waiting, as they are now. Helen carrying a gun and Willi an Axe in new WiaB previews is far from boring. But everyone has their preferences, it's no big deal that you find a story boring. There are many patrons who just want Bella, Sasha or Nami lewds and don't really care about the story even of SG. They just like the eye candy. I happen to like the story of the new WiaB far more than the story of SG, but currently the characters of SG have better emotional complexity, so I do like SG a lot as well.

If you're fast forwarding the 'chatter' how do you even know the details of the story though? The 'chatter' is where the story predominantly happens, the chatter explains what you see on the renders. I'm guessing you fast forwarded through the book club? This would explain why you don't know all the connections/insinuations between the games.



See this is where you are wrong. Speed won't always be comfortable. Just like he's rendering (foolishly in my opinion) scenes with 32 characters. This will have effects on the basketball games. 32 is more than enough for two teams and coaches but he'd better not do too many bystanders. Or he acts with sense and stitches renders together. But these moments in the game with large numbers of characters at full complexity will slow his comupter down. So look at the current dev time for both games and divide the number of renders currently by the number of days. That will give you the average Ocean speed. He'll have just as many hiccups. THere is no comfortable speed - because we don't know if one update (the gala when it happens, or a big basketball match) will have 32 characters the whole update (I Hope not) and that WILL slow the game development down. So I'll stand by my words. Two updates a year for both games would be an amazing result, and is within the capabilities of Ocean to deliver. He can do faster, but he'll get overambitious in some ways - simply because he's always trying to impress. His efforts to do too much make the game better, but also hamstring him.

Man the group rendering thing is a complete waste of time. Idk what software he uses, but isn't there a way to use low poly character models for the background characters and mask their lower detail by using depth of field (which ocean loves to use) instead of rendering everyone in high detail? Or if the scene is in a low light area, he can use the shadows to mask the low poly characters. Idk shit about DAZ or any other software, but it can't be this inefficient.

 

[BobTheDuck]

Man the group rendering thing is a complete waste of time. Idk what software he uses, but isn't there a way to use low poly character models for the background characters and mask their lower detail by using depth of field (which ocean loves to use) instead of rendering everyone in high detail? Or if the scene is in a low light area, he can use the shadows to mask the low poly characters. Idk shit about DAZ or any other software, but it can't be this inefficient.

Of course there are ways. He did it for the opening scene where NIka and Nami are at the college entrance.

Someone else could maybe mention if mixing gen 8 and gen 9 models causes memory problems, but there are lower poly versions, it'd like be using a stunt double. I just don't know enough about this side of things.

I have heard of some devs stitching multiple renders together, and fudging the shadows/lighting. Kinda like the old school thing of having cardboard cutouts to make a crowd. But then the characters are frozen in one movement, unless you do a heap of poses. You have to do the multiple renders, and cut together each time to check, redo it if you're not happy. But for real BG characters nowhere near the focal point, just have cardboard cutouts for each background character, swap them for real models when they're close enough for it to be noticeable.

But in real terms, if he can render 30 without problems, and it is 31 or 32 that cause the problems - damn, just make a crowd wallpaper for everyone beyond the 30 active characters - if they're REALLY necessary. No one can pay attention to 30+ characters on the screen, he's not doing "Where's Wally?" even if SG is a bit of "Where's Willy?"

 

[HarryDubois420]

But for real BG characters nowhere near the focal point, just have cardboard cutouts for each background character, swap them for real models when they're close enough for it to be noticeable.

Ngl that's a big brain idea. Nice.

But in real terms, if he can render 30 without problems, and it is 31 or 32 that cause the problems - damn, just make a crowd wallpaper for everyone beyond the 30 active characters - if they're REALLY necessary. No one can pay attention to 30+ characters on the screen, he's not doing "Where's Wally?" even if SG is a bit of "Where's Willy?"

"Where's willy?" Fuck that got me lmao. My man's probably getting his hips rearranged in Miru's dojo.

 

[PaxHadrian17]

BobTheDuck , I think Ocean is already doing some of the 'magic' you are referring to.

(I would have responded to your post directly but my last post reply was targeted so ... you know the deal. )

The 32 person render scene is actually larger (this from the dev log on Feb 26, 2025):

The scene has around 45 people in it, and at most 34 are visible at the same time. The issue was that the queue stopped two days in a row at night because it encountered scenes that were too big.

Long story short, it was one of the G9s that for some reason used up 11GB on her own.

I think a 4 person render scene with one person 'weighing in' at 11 GB would crush the hardware of a lot of less well equipped devs.

Once he fixed this issue with the offending 'G9' - it went way.

Ocean shares hardware and software glitches with his monthly $ supporters and one of us shares it here for the larger community to read.

Some enjoy it, others treat each 14-day dev log as another chance to find fault with Something that Ocean is doing.

I enjoy the story details and technical share details of each dev log.

If I was ever going to try to learn Daz/Blender/etc. - Ocean's Dev Logs certainly help provide some ideas on hardware/software issues and considerations.

They are also about as far as I am willing to go since, unlike Ocean, I am not going to be starting a new Python class to up my skills and I'm unlikely to give up some of my gaming time to spend an hour or two daily to learn/improve my blender skills.

I want faster quality updates to SG just like the rest of us, but I also appreciate Ocean's dedication to his craft and his desire to improve his creations.

Perfect is the enemy of 'good enough' but... good enough Always has a scale...

Cheers!!

 

[hermit_tr]

It's time for Ocean to save up some money to get the

You must be registered to see the links

 

[BobTheDuck]

BobTheDuck , I think Ocean is already doing some of the 'magic' you are referring to.

(I would have responded to your post directly but my last post reply was targeted so ... you know the deal. )

The 32 person render scene is actually larger (this from the dev log on Feb 26, 2025):

The scene has around 45 people in it, and at most 34 are visible at the same time. The issue was that the queue stopped two days in a row at night because it encountered scenes that were too big.

Long story short, it was one of the G9s that for some reason used up 11GB on her own.

I think a 4 person render scene with one person 'weighing in' at 11 GB would crush the hardware of a lot of less well equipped devs.

Once he fixed this issue with the offending 'G9' - it went way.

Ocean shares hardware and software glitches with his monthly $ supporters and one of us shares it here for the larger community to read.

Some enjoy it, others treat each 14-day dev log as another chance to find fault with Something that Ocean is doing.

I enjoy the story details and technical share details of each dev log.

If I was ever going to try to learn Daz/Blender/etc. - Ocean's Dev Logs certainly help provide some ideas on hardware/software issues and considerations.

They are also about as far as I am willing to go since, unlike Ocean, I am not going to be starting a new Python class to up my skills and I'm unlikely to give up some of my gaming time to spend an hour or two daily to learn/improve my blender skills.

I want faster quality updates to SG just like the rest of us, but I also appreciate Ocean's dedication to his craft and his desire to improve his creations.

Perfect is the enemy of 'good enough' but... good enough Always has a scale...

Cheers!!

Oh I totally get that - I mentioned the opening scene at the college, because that was done even before the A6000 ADA's with all the tricks. The issue is the aesthetic decision vs the technical reality - tt's always the case with these kinds of ambitious projects (not just Ocean, but anything really). In the situation mentioned in the devlog it was one character, but what happens if there are two characters with some kind of morph that makes them take up more memory? He might forget what each character has to modify it from custom, load too many memory intensive characters in a scene, and the computer just says no. The time he spends trying to work out why the computer says no is the problem. It will mean that day is one of problem solving, not creativity. And watching progress bars that have paused while waiting for renders, only to realise it's frozen.... a lot of these things are cumulative and wear the clock down.

He has to be his own tech support, and that's understood. But the decision of needing to pose 45 characters rather than turn some of them into cutouts like I assume he did in the first college scene is the thing. I'd hate to imagine he tries to render 100 characters for a basketball tournament of a music gig in a bar. There aren't 30 - 45 active people on the screen at a time, so how many should he make that need to be full quality?

But for me I do prefer that he finds the compromises he's willing to make. I can't make his computer go faster, so... it's more my concern for his own peace of mind. Technical things like memory leaks and having to optimise things takes away the time he can focus on creating, that is all.

 

[yossa999]

But for me I do prefer that he finds the compromises he's willing to make. I can't make his computer go faster, so...

If he starts looking for compromises, updates will probably come out more often. And even the script can probably be edited so that it will be finished in some foreseeable future. Heck, I am almost sure that with willing to do so and due effort it can be split into two games, without spoiling the initial idea too much, and making each of the two parts a self-sufficient game with the same characters. He can go for a lot of compromises, let's say with the music, you know this very well.

I just think that after all this, SG will remain a good game, even an excellent one. Hell, it will even remain one of the best of a few top games here. But it will lose something that makes it the best game the zone has to offer, something that puts it on a separate shelf from the rest.