itch.io

I'm enjoying this story very much.  Solid writing, good plot, funny dialog, etc.

One bit of technical feedback for future improvement: When users enable a non-transparent background for the dialog, it can get distracting to have that visible when there's no dialog.  It often blocks important visual elements, makes it hard to see menu choices, etc.  This is particularly noticeable during cutscenes, where the text box is just in the way, and when there are choices, where the bottom choices are half obscured behind the text box (which can't be hidden without also hiding the menu).

Just adding "window auto" goes a long way towards improving the behavior (as verified by typing it in the developer console), but there are still a bunch of stills with no dialog where an explicit "window hide" would be beneficial.

That (probably) minor tweak would be a big improvement.

I always just download a recent version of the Ren'Py SDK, drop the AVN into its folder, double-click the Ren'Py app, and run it from there.  Pretty sure this one is based on Ren'Py 7, so for maximum compatibility, use Ren'Py 7.x (current is 7.7.1, I think).   That also saves you the hassle of dealing with Apple's Quarantine behavior.

Unzip in Terminal, maybe?  Or maybe your download was truncated somehow?

Ah.  I was getting load failures when running it from the 7.6.x SDK, so I jumped straight to 8.2.  (I don't run randomly downloaded RP apps as-is for paranoia reasons.)  I didn't even know they released a 7.7.  :-D

Well, I guess it isn't quite that simple.  Four spots in the code are expecting None (in my_events.rpy, 01_asara.rpy, and two spots in worldmap.rpy), and should also be adjusted to check for 0.  But that's probably a better fix than trying to handle NoneType everywhere that a numeric value would normally be expected.

Had to change to sys.stdout.write to actually see the log.  Eileen is the culprit, and specifically, story_6.  If I execute the code in that function by hand, it fails at Check_Req(ev_var) in line 90 with self.story == 6.

Digging in further, the call to player_inv.qty(AliceOutfit) returns None, rather than 0 as one might reasonably expect.

I suspect the fix is as simple as

        def qty(self, item):
            for i in self.inv:
                if i[0] == item:
                    return i[1] # returns quantity
            return 0

unless there's some reason to return NoneType instead of 0 for that function.

At least that keeps the exception from happening.  I'm assuming that it will eventually get added to the inventory as expected when I do whatever thing I need to do.

Ran into a bug when loading existing saves:

While running game code:
  File "game/myscripts/my_time.rpy", line 3187, in script
    $ AllAvailableEvents()
  File "game/myscripts/my_time.rpy", line 3187, in <module>
    $ AllAvailableEvents()
  File "game/myscripts/my_events.rpy", line 80, in AllAvailableEvents
  File "game/myscripts/my_events.rpy", line 90, in AvailableEvents
  File "game/myscripts/my_events.rpy", line 217, in Check_Req
  File "game/myscripts/my_events.rpy", line 204, in Check_VarReq
TypeError: '>=' not supported between instances of 'NoneType' and 'int'

Not sure if ignoring is safe or if I'm going to end up with weirdness.

Mac Mega link is invalid.  Typo?

For a quick workaround, edit options.rpy and add

define config.developer = True

Then quit and relaunch the app.  When you get the problem (whether by progressing in the story or by loading from a save file), just hit Shift-O, then type:

stop sound fadeout 5.0

and hit return.  Hit escape to get back out of developer mode.

Something very weird is going on in this build.

All saves from previous builds are broken, saying that they can't find a place to stop rolling back.  I'm not seeing any missing labels, so I have no idea what's wrong with those.

But I tried restarting from scratch, and as soon as I quit and relaunch, even *new* saves from the last parts of Chapter 7 are failing to load.

I think maybe the rollback buffer size is way, way, way too small, and there are way too few jumps or statements that count towards Ren'Py knowing where you are.

I changed config.rpy to add this:

define config.rollback_enabled = True
define config.hard_rollback_limit = 300
define config.rollback_length = 500

and now new saves are working as one would expect.  The right fix is probably to put in more labels and jumps, I guess, but upping those limits from the current number (which is apparently not high enough for this AVN) will at least make it less fragile.  *shrugs*  Either way.

Seconded.  Spelling/grammar nits are generally rare and minor, the pacing is comfortable, and it has solid storytelling with a compelling plot, interesting characters, a good sense of humor, etc.  It is well worth reading.

I can only say that about roughly 6.2% of the AVNs that I've read or started to read, and most of the other titles on that short list are the sorts of titles that get updated once or twice per year, so I'm really impressed at the velocity you achieve without tanking the quality.  😁

+1.  It drives the plot forward, giving a reason for the wife to leave the husband, which I'm assuming is going to happen at some point, and the MC isn't dating the wife's sister, so there's no hint of NTR there at all.  If you want to change it, fine, but you shouldn't feel compelled to do so.  Some people are fragile and will complain about everything, but if you cater too much to them, you'll end up with a story that's shallow and boring.

A couple of typos / nits:

- "good to know *you're* on my side" (rather than "you")

- A few lines later, no comma needed after "Call"

- Next line should have be a period and uppercase letter after "Will do."

I might also quibble about "continue on", but I could go either way on that.

Weird punctuation nit in the latest update: "Now and then" is a common English idiom, and at one spot, you used a clause ending with "now" followed by "and" to start a compound predicate beginning with "then", which makes it look like you're using that idiom.

But then the sentence unexpectedly goes on afterwards.  When readers realize it wasn't intended as an idiom, they can get very confused (because the remainder of the sentence is unparseable at that point) and may be forced to go back and reread the entire sentence to figure out what's actually going on.

Even though you don't normally use a comma before a compound predicate, this is one of those spots where it is *really* needed.  Changing it to "...the address now, and then make..." would greatly improve understandability.

Yes, I'm arguing to violate Chicago or whatever, but adding a comma between those phrases isn't strictly wrong, and improves readability in this one weird edge case, so...  yeah.  Or you could just repeat the subject and make it a full compound sentence.

According to the description, the Steam version has some extra scenes.

And for this kind of game, it therefore helps to set it in Tennessee or Texas, for obvious reasons.

Seems to be broken again.  :/  Low-end shared hosting starts at about $10 a month, so maybe you should just bite the bullet.  :-)

Your demo versions seem to also be paywalled.  I'm assuming that't not intentional.  😁

This demo version seems to no longer exist on Mega.

No, there's a gallery.  The GP wanted a galery.  Presumably that's some sort of room that blows their skirts up.  😁  Sorry, couldn't resist.

I'm assuming that the author meant an "Underground Railroad" by the Civil War meaning — as in helping slaves escape to freedom — rather than an "underground railroad" by the modern meaning — as in a subway train.

In that case, my guess is that maybe they fixed some sort of core voltage management bug in the firmware, which might mean that the problem is fixed, or it might mean you're being slightly throttled because of an inadequate power supply.  :-)

FWIW, not every update.

No idea.  I'm on Sonoma; it could be a difference in what python modules are installed.  Try

pip3.9 install urllib2

and see if that helps, or if not, try turning off analytics.

There was a Patreon post two days ago with 2.7, so no.  Apparently, the author doesn't post much between releases (and by that, I mean... well... at all  😂).

Download the Ren'Py SDK and run it from there.  8.2 seems to work fine with this one.

A skim of the Ren'Py code (at least in the Mac version) reveals nothing that looks unusual to me, so if there is a virus, it's probably in the wrapper code.  Just run it with a clean copy of the Ren'Py engine and you should be fine.  But it's probably a false positive.

Sounds like they made an incompatible change to the script since the last save you loaded.  Looks like that variable appears at the start of day 10.  Try loading a save from the previous day (day 9).

The Mac version has some weird stuff going on:

• The .rpa files are all named .rap.
• The nonstandard .ttf, .otf, and .TTF font files are in renpy/common instead of in the game folder where they should be.

The result is that if somebody tries to run it with a trusted copy of Ren'Py (which I always do for malware reasons), it breaks badly.  No idea if it would work when you run it by double-clicking or not.

This AVN has about as many lines of dialog as a 15-season hour-long TV show, give or take (168,000), so... it's easy for that much content to add up.

Or release earlier and/or more often on Patreon, or...

To the author, after reading your Patreon post, if your crashes come back and it isn't because the CPU is going massively out of spec temperature-wise, try running a RAM test overnight.  And reseat everything.

Any chance of a demo?

Either way, you should probably stop taking payments for the old versions when you release the new ones, or at least change the description to say "This is NOT the latest version.   Go __here__ to get the latest version" at the top.

After all, anybody who buys this version today for ten cents more than v0.18 is probably going to feel cheated.  :-)

The episode 5 download contains the entire story up through episode 5.

The previous two updates took 13 to 16 months.  If there's no update by December 2024, worry.

Bug: If both "Gyals" quests are complete, the dinner scene acts like you haven't started them.