NokiMo
Berncastel
Berncastel

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Some Q&A about sponsorship, developing and so on.

English version:

After the second patch the demo is finally stabilized, you can go directly to Dlsite to download the complete latest demo, no need to install patches one by one from previous articles.

However, before fully sink myself into the development, it is still necessary to answer some of the questions often asked recently by a Q & A, such as developing speed, sponsored trial version, progress, etc.

Q: The main demo content has not changed much from previous demo, there is just a little new CG new plot. Are you really working?

A: In fact, a lot of good content is not put into the demo, the vast majority of the game's CG content, most of the text content and gameplay-related design has already been completed, but in order to ensure that players in the official version won’t tired by contents already in the demo, we didn’t give much contents to the demo. It’s…. just a demo.

When it comes to the development problem, the main force of BBQ club is still students, who are not only busy with their studies, but also do not have enough expertise in game development, so they cannot achieve the same level of project management and development efficiency as a professional team.

And the bigger difficulty comes from the structure design. The main logic of a normal Hentai game, including the last one, is actually very simple, as long as we keep player’s track in check and do event logic around it.

But this work innovatively (or unknowingly?) tries to simulate the reasonable actions of characters outside the player (although there are still many places that rely on randomness) without enough technical capacity, so the event structure and logical interactions are several times more complicated than the general Hentai-game which also limits the development speed.


Q: Ah? Is it so troublesome? I see that the development of other female-protagonist game is not so difficult?

A: This involves a huge difference in the main perspective of the player. As I just said, in a typical heroine game, the core of the whole game is controlled by the player, and all the scenes are built for the heroine and the player to explore, a static system.

But since we choose the hidden sex specialized male protagonist perspective NTR game, it is inevitable to create things that the player does not necessarily see in order to create the tension needed for the hidden sex. In other words, the logic of events revolves around the female NPC, but it is the player-controlled male protagonist who watches the events. But this alone is not enough, the player also has to have the means to interfere with the logic of the events taking place to protect the heroine, which leads to a high level of complexity in the underlying logic, we need to ensure all elements are working before we add something new.

BBQ No. 2: So why did we want to make a male protagonist perspective NTR game at first?

BBQ No. 1: Because somebody was stubborn as a donkey (

Well, but at least judging from the demo and the response, although not as good as the initial idea, the final result is okay.


Q: I understand the reasoning, should we release some paid trial version? We have new contents to play, you have more funds.

A: I would like to answer this question in three ways.

1. The native RPG Maker MV does not support in-game language switching, unless it is like terunon (https://ci-en.net/creator/4694) AbsentedAge: アブセンテッドエイジ uses very powerful technical capacity to overcome this problem. Otherwise, we would have had to make each language version of the game separately, as we did.

The process is roughly as follows

Make version A → Output A1 → Translate the output version A1 into other languages → Generate T1 that stores the translated text

When I need to make a demo version

Make the latest version B → output B1 → put the text of T1 into B1 and turn it into B2.

Delete B1 and B2 and turn them into demo version C1 and C2.

Add some contents to C1 and C2, and turn them into paid demo version D1 and D2.

So far, C1, C2, D1, D2 are the 4 trial versions needed for public at one time.

Then if I find a bug, I need to modify each of the 4 versions once, which is 5 times the workload (the original version also needs to be modified once).

So you should be able to understand from the workload why I do not want to make too many trial versions.


2. The problem of development cost and development cycle

The paid demo is indeed a good way to keep the project running and get more money to improve the quality of the final product when the development funds are not enough, but BBQ's current funds are enough to finish Nebel with quality and quantity, and even if additional funds are added, it is difficult to efficiently translate it into the quality of the final product with our current project management level and game structure. So instead of prolonging the overall development cycle for the sake of making a paid demo version, we should focus on making the finished product available for sale directly.


3. Personal understanding of sponsorship

I still think that the original intention of sites like Ci-en and Patreon should be that the author show his efforts to everyone, and then everyone is free to judge the author's potential and efforts, and finally use some money to help the author finish his work.

In other words, my ideal author-backer relationship should be built on trust and appreciation, not just priced commodity. Why else would I read every comment and basically reply to every comment? (It’s not anymore the time back when I only had 100 fans, hundreds of comments everytime)


I would like to talk about the progress, but this time I've written so much, so … next time.

By the way, I'm a little busy at the end of this month, it’s possible for us not to update for around a week.

Don't stay up late every day to see if there is an update, please take care of your health.

We can set the time to release the notes, but sleep is not so obedient, love yourself more!


中文版:

修了兩次之後終於沒有什麽幹擾遊戲正常運行的bug了,大家如果嫌麻煩可以直接去Dlsite上下載完整的最新Demo。

不過在埋頭開發之前,還是有必要以Q&A的形式解答壹下最近常常被問到的壹些問題,比如產能,贊助試玩版,進度等等。


Q:從去年的Demo到現在,主要的遊戲內容沒有什麽變化啊,也沒有什麽新CG新劇情,妳們真的有在好好開發嗎?

A:其實做好的很多內容並沒有放進Demo中,遊戲絕大部分的CG內容,大部分的文本內容以及玩法相關的設計都已經完成了,但為了保證玩家在正式版時不會出現大部分內容都已經見過了的情況,因此並沒有為試玩版分配過多內容。

說到開發的問題,其實BBQ社團的主力都還是學生,不僅忙於學業,遊戲開發相關的專業知識也不夠,所以並不能做到專業團隊那樣的項目管理水平和開發效率。

而且更大的困難來自於結構設計。普通的同人遊戲,包括上壹作的五日寸止,其實主幹邏輯是很簡單的,只要管理好玩家對於事件的觸發邏輯就好了,出了問題也好排查。

只是這壹作創新性地(或者說不知天高地厚地?)試圖在並沒有很高技術力的情況下在RM平臺模擬玩家外角色的合理行動(雖然還是有不少地方依賴隨機性),因此在事件結構,邏輯互動上要比壹般的同人作復雜好幾倍,也因此限制了開發速度。


Q:啊?這麽麻煩的嗎?我看其他同人作的女主遊戲開發並沒有這麽累啊?

A:這就涉及到玩家主視角不同所帶來的巨大差別了。就像剛剛說的,壹般的同人女主遊戲中,整個遊戲事件的核心就在玩家身上,所有場景都是搭建給女主角和玩家壹同探索的靜態世界。

但既然選擇了隱奸特化的男主視角NTR遊戲,那就必然要創造玩家不壹定能看到的事,才能營造出隱奸所需的緊張感。換句話說,事件發生的邏輯圍繞著女主NPC,但觀看事件的卻是玩家控制的男主角。但僅僅這樣還不夠,玩家還要有手段來幹涉事件發生的邏輯,保護女主角,這就導致底層邏輯的復雜度很高,放入任何新內容都要考慮好所有元素間的互動才行…

2號:所以我當初是為啥想不開了要做男主遊戲呢?

1號:因為妳當時犟的像頭驢(

嘛嘛,但是至少從目前Demo的效果和大家的反響來看,雖然比不上最開始的設想,但是效果也還不錯。


Q:道理我都懂,要不要出壹些付費試玩版?我們玩到了新內容,妳們開發也有更多的經費,不好嗎?

A:這個問題我想從三個方面回答:

1.原生的RPG Maker MV不支持遊戲內切換語言,除非是像terunon(https://ci-en.net/creator/4694)  的 AbsentedAge:アブセンテッドエイジ壹樣用很厲害的技術力克服這個問題,否則像我們就只能單獨制作每個語言版本的遊戲。

流程大概是:

制作版本A→輸出A1→把輸出版本A1翻譯成其他語言→生成存儲翻譯文本的T1

當我需要制作試玩版的時候

制作最新版本B→輸出B1→把T1的文本放入B1後變成B2.

對B1、B2進行刪減,變成試玩版C1、C2.

對C1、C2增加部分內容,變成付費試玩版D1、D2。

至此,C1、C2、D1、D2就是壹次公開需要的4個試玩版。

然後如果發現bug,我需要壹個操作對4個版本各修改壹次,也就是工作量5倍(原本的版本也需要修改壹次)。

所以大家從工作量上應該能明白我為什麽不想做太多試玩版了。


2.開發經費與開發周期的問題

付費試玩確實是在開發資金不足時,維持項目運轉,獲得更多經費來提升最終產品質量的很好的方式,只是BBQ目前的資金足以將Nebel保質保量地完成,同時就算再度追加資金,以我們目前的項目管理水平和遊戲架構,也很難高效地將其轉化為成品質量,所以與其為了制作付費試玩版延長整體的開發周期,不如集中精力將成品做出來直接發售。

3.個人對於贊助的理解

我始終還是覺得,像Ci-en,Patreon這樣的網站,初衷應該是,作者將自己的努力展示給大家,然後大家可以自由地判斷作者的潛力與努力,最後用壹些資金幫助作者完成他的作品。

換句話說,我理想中的作者與支持者的關系應該是靠信任與欣賞為基礎建立的,而不是冷冰冰的價格與供貨。不然我為什麽每條評論都看,而且基本每條評論都回復呢?(這不是我100粉絲的時候了,現在壹口氣回幾百條評論很累的)

本來還想聊聊進度的,不過這次都寫這麽多了下次再說吧。

順便這個月月底我有點忙,壹星期左右都沒更新記事也是可能的,

不要天天熬夜來看有沒有更新,請註意身體。

記事可以定時間發布,但睡眠就不壹定那麽聽話了,要更愛護自己哦~


Some Q&A about sponsorship, developing and so on.

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