That’s simply amazing
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Are there any other Linux users who can test server connectivity? I would do it, but I’ve been away from that machine for a bit in favor of my dying old HP Envy.
I run Manjaro (Arch-based). Logging in, and server connectivity works on my system just fine. Which distribution do you try to log in with?
As a Linux user you might need to explicitly enable network access for the game: The game spins up a temporary HTTP server so that the login page can redirect access tokens to the game.
Gotcha. I use Arch Linux w/ KDE Plasma, so it should work based on what you said.
Previously, the game has used port 5000 to receive the access token. This caused problems on Mac, because port 5000 is not available there. Idk about KDE Plasma.
In v0.48.2 the game asks your operating system for a random, available port to use. Maybe this solves your issue too
You could also try running the .sh file for game startup from the terminal. That way you should see any technical errors that occur during the login process.
I downloaded the newest version and i keep getting errors. Whenever Chelsea showed up i had to ignore the error to move on and she was invisible and the projects was broken so i cant complete one
I expressly made an account just to give my input. That being said, I think I may have a reasonable solution to the, “Casual Subscriber,” dilemma. In so doing, I have prepared a JPEG to get my idea across quickly.
This is a bit heavy in scope for a Renpy game - and doesn’t solve the stated problem of preventing abuse of the image generation system.
I do think a key with a validity period might still be a workable solution (or a delayed check on Patreon status, if the Patreon API doesn’t allow for this kind of token generation); the API for the image generator/fetcher checks if the key/token/subscription is still valid and accepts/denies the generation request accordingly, falling back to a generic ‘not found’ or simply less granular image included in the game files; whether non-subscribers should then be able to access pre-generated images hosted remotely would probably depend on how expensive that bandwidth ends up being.
While I understand the developer’s looking to keep costs manageable for what’s undeniably a large-scale undertaking, I don’t think locking everything behind a continued subscription is a feasible long-term solution. It might make sense for a month or two when the image generator first goes live, but consider the actual amount of content being added monthly otherwise - putting aside the behind-the-scene changes that few users will actually notice, this month added tweaks for the waitress job and not much else. Last update had more technical changes, but only the office job received new content. Before that it was UI overhauls that relied heavily on AI-generated content. A continued $11.50 per month just to access the game when new content is slow to release is a pretty hard sell, and for a lot of people being able to have somewhat more specific image representations - something that’s not even possible yet - probably isn’t going to be as big a sell as one might hope.
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First of all, I truly appreciate your efforts in trying to come up with a solution for this. This topic, however, is much more complicated than someone might think. It’s a discussion that has been going on in science for years if not decades.
Your approach assumes the authenticity of the game running on the computer. Since the game is written in Ren’Py everyone can super easily edit the source code. And actually, I want to keep the source code easy to work with, especially for modders in the community.
Thus, we cannot trust the game by having it tell the server which version it is, because a modder could easily fake that to use an outdated access token for playing a newer version.
To truly solve this problem you will need to dive deep into cryptography. Verifying the authenticity of software has been a long-lasting discussion. As of my knowledge, no scientist has found a perfectly reliable solution to this issue so far. Feel free to prove me wrong, though. I’m happy to explore options about verifying client authenticity.
I suppose it was somewhat arrogant of me to presume I could solve a problem I had no background knowledge of. My apologies for not being as helpful as I hoped.
Any updates on public release?
I just want to say I really enjoy this game 
So far Samantha is my favourite character. I hope there’ll be more content for her in the future, like going out together or just chatting.
Today is November 1st, which means that by subscribing to Patreon today will result in the biggest benefit, because all memberships created in November will end with November 30th.
Not at all, it was a genuine attempt to help; I appreciate that.
Unfortunately there is no update for the public version in sight. I have too much to focus on, currently.
Noted, I will consider it for future updates 
So if I got this right, this new subscription based system compiles an image defined in advance in the code of the game one by one as some player first time ever encounters that point in the game and after that the system just serves the same image for the next player reaching that point? Considering that the game is not procedurally generated, is such a system necessary in the first place as I would guess it doesn’t require that many play through to have at least most images already be generated? Especially considering that with every version update you probably don’t have to start with zero again for content that has not been changed.
Also, as you have to test out the build yourself before even releasing the new version to Patreon wouldn’t that mean the images are already been generated at the point of release in order for you to see that everything works as planned?
I don’t really warm up with this subscription based model.
This is indeed true. As of right now, the login system serves no further purpose. However, I still implemented it in advance before it was needed to ensure everything worked smoothly. After all, if there are problems with the login system, this would be quite critical: You wouldn’t be able to play the game.
The system will become interesting with the image generation engine in a few months.
That’s a clear yes, due to several reasons. Prominently, due to security reasons to prohibit abuse of the infrastructure.
It is going to be a never-ending task. Why? Because once all images are generated, we’ll add new images that will need generation again.
Maybe not never-ending, but I plan on playing this game of adding new stuff for some extended period of time.
That’s right, but it’s about extending the game further.
Not really. It works like this: The game wants to show you an image, so it contacts cloud services for that image. If this image exists, you’ll be able to see it within a few milliseconds in the game. If not, you’ll see a placeholder and the image will be generated in the cloud. Generating everything in advance would mean months of pure rendering time, while with this approach, the engine can be released on day 1, and even if not all images were generated, due to this demand-faced approach, the images your game requests, will likely already exist, because certain image combinations will be more common than others.
So, is this going to go in direction of being procedurally generated or what exactly mean “will become interesting in few months”?
And I still don’t get the part of how can devs test the new content before releasing without generating any images? Or are you going to skip that part completely?
The image generation engine relies on powerful computers in the cloud (with lots of GPUs) to create new images. These computers need to be rented, and are quite pricy. If more people play the game, we will need more computers (=> higher cost).
Now theoretically speaking, only paying members get to access the newest versions. So as long as everyone pays their subscription fee, the additional cost for the computers is covered. The situation gets problematic, if e.g. the game is pirated and published on 3rd party websites free to download for everyone. This would allow hundreds of people to download the game, and play it - and use the cloud resources increasing cost for the game. However, since these people don’t pay a subscription they do not compensate for their usage.
That’s why a verification process is necessary: To prevent this kind of abuse. Until recently pirating has led to missed out earnings (e.g. because people pirated the game instead of paying for it). However with the image generation engine, I wouldn’t just miss out on earnings, but I would actively loose money since those illegal players would create additional cost. So the situation would worsen further.
Introducing the verification system solves the new problem (increased cost due to piracy) and the old problem (missed out earnings due to piracy).
The verification system was introduced before the image generation engine to ensure that everything works as expected.
Okay, so let’s oversimplify a bit for this example. Let’s say you put on blue jeans, a white tank top and weigh 80kg. So you’d need an image of an 80kg character wearing a white tank top and blue jeans (these all influence the way your character looks).
So your game would ask the cloud services for this images. If the image is there, the cloud services would send that image to you, so your game can show you how you look.
Now, let’s say you gain 1kg (and look a slightly bit different), so you need a new image. However, upon requesting the image the cloud realizes that an image with 81kg, a white tank top and blue jeans is not yet there. So the cloud would ask a computer to put together a character with 81kg, a white tank top and blue jeans. This computer puts these components together, and creates an image with this configuration, then stores it. While the computer does that the game would show you a placeholder (e.g. a loading icon) until the image was created.
And that’s why I don’t need to create the images in advance.
I can test the game just the way I did before, because in the game it is just a set of data that is handled. In the game I simply add new customization options (e.g. that you could wear a red shirt as well) and add support for red shirts to the image generation engine. I don’t actually need the image. For testing purposes it will suffice, if I generate e.g. an image of 80kg, a red shirt, blue jeans and another image of 160kg, a red shirt and blue jeans. If you play the game and need an image of 95kg, a red shirt and blue jeans, the image wouldn’t exist. However, generating will most likely work, because I tested the upper and lower boundary (whether the shirt looks good on thin characters, and whether it looks good on heavy characters).
Think of it like a linear function in mathematics. If I do two measurements on a line (e.g. f(80) and f(160)), I can tell you any other value on that line without having to make new measurements. So to say, I make the measurements when setting up the red shirt, but I don’t need to measure every single combination. I can simply compute these combinations afterwards as needed.
I have the most stupid question possible: where can you drink water?
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I’m going to be frank here, So this is more about preventing piracy than actual improvement for players? Or that is the feeling I’m getting. Because after images have been generated it’s nothing more than typical image hosting since there is no actual heavy processing power requiring image generation needed. And plain image hosting doesn’t take much resources and thus is pretty cheap these days. We are also speaking very niche game market here so even in case of upload to a 3rd party site there won’t be thousands, even hundreds simultaneous players in these games which still would just require mostly image hosting, not generation.
I am also bit skeptic about the actual benefit of having too many weight stages in a game anyway since after a certain point the changes become pretty hard to notice even with IRL people and then there is a problem of integrating all those subtly different stages to the story anyway.
I’m sorry, but I just can’t help that I’m getting same feeling about this than once long ago with certain artist called FAF/Furbit. Long story short for those who have never heard about that drama rich case, he was a furry artist that went quite a bit overboard while fighting with people he always called thieves.