Gain of Life: A weight gain life simulator [v0.53.0]

[SirMister]

I have implemented an offline mode. If you signed in and your subscription has expired, you will see an “Offline mode” button. If you click it, you can play the game without signing in. Note that you must sign in with an active subscription the first time you download it.

The offline mode won’t connect to the internet and will only work on the device that you originally started the game on. I haven’t tested it yet. But the plan is that this will be part of the next update as well. I hope to address most people’s concerns with this change.

The reason for this change is, as @sdirishpirate72 (I appreciate your kind words, thank you) has stated, that the criticism is a bit overbearing and influences the process; it takes the joy out of developing the game. If it’s not fun to create, we can cancel the project. And I’d rather have GoL to be financially unstable, but therefore fun again to develop.

And who knows? Maybe it works out financially, too, if the initial activation deters enough pirates.

[magicmanstan]

Glad to see this happen. Though I wish people were nicer in how they expressed their dislike with the current system. The overall idea you had in mind with it was a cool one.

I hope this game continues to be a fun thing for you develop.

[SirMister]

New Version [v0.53.0]

Details can be found in this Patreon post: https://www.patreon.com/posts/146458429

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get around to adding new Christmas content. Still, a lot has changed. Especially UI-wise. Since GoL is a sandbox game, this update includes another major step towards making it as a sandbox game more fun: The last update added options to show exact stat numbers. This update now does foreshadowing with how certain choices will influence your stats.

I felt the need to release something once again to keep you updated. The numberifying of the game isn’t done yet, though. It’ll continue with the next update, hopefully along new content.

[SirMister]

Oh, I almost forgot to add: This version includes an offline mode. If your subscription expires, you’ll see an “Offline Mode” button at the bottom of the login screen. It’ll allow you to play the game even after unsubscribing, so you can keep that version of the game forever after your initial activation:

[SirMister]

Happy New Year, guys!

Small reminder: Today is the best day to subscribe, as it will give you access to the game until the end of January, regardless of when you subscribed during January.

[Jnat]

I have a question regarding the newest free version I can play how can I trigger more stuff with jane

[SirMister]

Hi, appreciate the question. Unfortunately, I will need more details on your progress. This is, because Jane’s story depends on several factors, depending on progress on where/how it continues. Generally speaking, however, going to college once on time and once too late could trigger the next event.

[Jnat]

rn I just got finished with choosing jane over the family event but after that idk what to do

[SirMister]

Gain of Life is hereby officially cancelled. I think this is the correct step to take, because it’s basically been cancelled, but just not officially yet, because I still had the hope of returning to it. The servers for Gain of Life will shut down at the end of the month, which shouldn’t be a problem, if you activated the game already (offline mode is available anyways). If not, please don’t worry, I will make one final version of the game, which I aim on making available. I’ll remove the online check altogether for the final version, and thus make it natively offline once again. Maybe I’ll do some adjustments to certain content, and one last, minor update to round off certain content, to give it a little bit of a “completeness” feeling. I aim on making the final version available on Itch; for free for loyal Patrons (i.e. those who paid for Patreon subscriptions shouldn’t pay twice for the game). On Itch, the game will be yours to keep.

Now what does this mean? Well, Gain of Life won’t receive any more updates in the future. However, I have a couple of items on my list that I will try out. I will pitch a list of ideas soon.

One major learning I would like to take towards a new potential game project is to outline the scope more clearly, and aiming on completing it. Maybe a smaller game project for starters. My Patreon will continue running, but the funds will no longer be GoL-specific, but for new projects. Funds collected in excess to GoL will go towards a potential new project, including funds I’ve collected over the past months. And there’ll be polls on Patreon to ensure that these funds are used in a way that you guys support.

I know these news might come in disappointment to some of you. Looking on the bright side, however, this is the chance for a new project to do all the things right that went wrong with GoL. Please feel free to share your thoughts. Game ideas, or concepts you find interesting, but felt are missing in games so far. I’d like to use this opportunity for a closing discussion, as part of the transition to a new project. Please note: Criticism is appreciated, but keep the energy positive. Suggestions for improvements will help framing the next project; whereas simply reiterating on all the negative things of GoL won’t help at all.

[Borthold]

What an adventure this was. I’ve followed it for a long time as a lurker, now here I am with an account, to give a heaping of praise for the introduction of a good core gameplay loop with 40-something visual stages, the most in any game I’ve seen. And the much-maligned portrait generation, was at its core, a doubling down on that choice of gradations and nuance.

I also don’t want to heap on negativity but I want to give you the opportunity to add some further positivity, by expressing a lesson you learned based on what I think a lot of people have been trying to express to you. I see you mention “outline scope more clearly and aim on completing it” as aims for your next venture. Fair enough, admirable goals. But maybe you can make your future games more profitable, less suspect up-front, if you also decide on a monetisation strategy at the start and then stick to it. I hope that, given that you have made this decision, at least some of the concerns voiced earlier about dropping support, seem more salient in retrospect.

That’s all the soapbox I had. Best of luck!

[Skinny_Guy]

It’s certainly been a long journey. I remember discovering Gain of Life all those years ago back in 2020, it was such an ambitious and promising game and I’m glad you stuck with it for as long as you did! Totally understandable that the project isn’t viable anymore especially after the big asset generator controversy. I hope you’ve learned a lot from this project, and that you can create something new and even better with all the skills you’ve acquired over the years

[Krispee]

Tragic, but even I have trouble working on big, long projects. Thanks for all the good memories, and good luck on your next endeavor!

[sdirishpirate72]

So w what about the free update, I thought there was 49.0 update

[SirMister]

Alright, I posted a new game idea and demo on Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/sirmister/posts/new-game-idea-165808005

Let’s have a discussion with subscribers, and if I feel confident in the idea, I’ll post it here in a new thread.

[Jnat]

For GoL how much Jane content is there for her

[sdirishpirate72]

I’ve never gotten far enough in it, but I would imagine there’s a whole relationship. My game crashes long before I get to that point

[magusobscurusadiposi]

Before I say anything just please know that I am saying all of this from a place of positivity and because I want you to succeed.

First I think you are correct, it is a good idea to start with a smaller scale project. Make something you are confident you can get to a complete 1.0 within a reasonable amount of time. It is only going to be harder to maintain subsribers and attract new one’s with an abandoned project associated with your name. I’m not saying your reasons for doing so aren’t justified, I’m just being honest about how Devs in this space are percieved.

Second, I hope with your next project you are a little more transparent/open about what content is in the game, particularly when it comes to character sizes. I scrolled through this entire thread and I think there were maybe 3 pictures that depicted the main character at something other than the starting size. I understand that you were going for a realistic pace with GoL and that you don’t want to reveal everything, but this is ultimately a weight gain gaming forum, people need to be able to see if something is going to align with their tastes, particularly if you are going to continue with this subscription only model.

Third, and I’m sorry if this sounds harsh, but there are several Daz asset projects or similar 3D model games on this site and elsewhere that deliver a substantial amounts of new content with each monthly update and roll out bug fixes in between, and projects with longer periods between drops have consistent dev logs and very communicative creators, and if all else fails they pause payments. I am sure some subscribers were tolerant of these delays with GoL because they had a personal investment in the game going back several years, but with a new project people are not going to be as forgiving.

I haven’t subbed to your Patreon in several years, and it looks like a lot of your old GoL posts are no longer on the patreon so I can only go by this thread, and what I’m seeing is several periods where you’ve ghosted the project, and I don’t see any mention of payment pauses, or any real apologies, just you telling people they are free to cancel, which while true doesn’t inspire confidence. Putting the entire responsibility of figuring out that the game won’t be updated for several months on the consumer is disrespectful.

Life happens, I completely understand that you don’t want to put your personal stuff out there, but life is also happening to all of the people giving you a portion of their pay check. You are also not developing these projects for free, and if you are going to be taking people’s money then you owe them consistent communication at minimum.

Again, I am sorry if this comes off as overly critical or mean-spirited because that’s not my intent, but I can’t lie and say that you haven’t done a good deal of damage to your reputation over the years. That said I would love nothing more than to see you have a completed project on itch or steam or even exclusively on Patreon and hand you money for it, I want everyone in this space to florish

[GraySky]

I think this is in fact way too harsh. Gain of Life was never one of my favorite games on here, I didn’t like how the tier system on its Patreon worked, and I was definitely not on SirMister’s side in the must-always-be-connected-to-an-active-Patreon-membership image generator controversy, so it feels strange to find myself obligated to put forth a defense. However, I think there are some standards being set in this post that hardly ANY game on here would meet, and I disagree with its portrayal of the current market when it comes to DAZ-driven WG games that could be seen as competitors to GoL.

First, I think it’s pretty unfair to describe this as an ‘abandoned game’. Filling Up My Roommates, Thicker Treat, and Fill Me Up are presumed to be abandoned - the Patreons are up, but no word has been heard from the developers in years. Here, we got an explicit cancellation notice. I could see the term also applying if there were some sort of envisioned final state for the game or some central storyline to conclude and the plug got pulled before then, but I never felt like that was the case with GoL as much as there was just going to be a continual addition of new paths and side content - in which case, development was always going to end at some point, and this doesn’t feel like a notably worse time than any other.

Second, regarding there being a plethora of visual novels driven by high-quality DAZ renders that are currently updating on a monthly cadence… Fattening Career and Sultan’s Harem are now taking up to six months between versions. Feeder Simulator is releasing faster, but still taking a few months on average. D.I.E.T. is also one of the faster ones, with 1-2 month release timelines looking back over the past couple. The Weighting Game’s next version has been in development for years. Whole Hog’s last version was over a year ago, and The Queendom of Corpula’s was over two. Project Realism ran over the initial release date for its second version by over a year - I don’t remember how long it actually ended up taking altogether. I think Chunky Cheerleader also took about that long to get its final version, though I could be mistaken there - that one was not as easy to check. A Broad Semester took just under a year to get its latest version.

This is not to call out any of these games for taking so long. I have played, supported, and enjoyed all of them, I have nothing but love and respect for their developers, and I supported them when they had their own unannounced hiatuses or communications gaps, which was the case for even some of the most popular and loved. Now, I know that some of these don’t have Patreons (or the devs have them but have made clear that they are explicitly not linked to the development of their ‘main game’) so the gap between releases is not as relevant of a comparison as it is for one that does. This is only brought up to put numbers to how long the most similar other games are actually taking for each version, and to make the point that developing and supporting a game is hard. Setting a standard of ‘monthly releases with bug fixes in between’ is likely only going to be setting yourself up for disappointment.

This community has a history of overestimating how much of a buyer’s market this niche is when setting their expectations, and then wondering why devs end up abandoning the space. If someone is wary of supporting a future SirMister game because of the image generator stuff and how long they held out on that, I think that’s totally valid and I am not fully outside of that camp myself. But considering how many ambitious proposed games on here I have seen fail to clear the bar of ‘became A Real Thing that can be downloaded and played’ - some of which had Patreons, and some of which still do - I am willing to grant a lot of charity and goodwill towards someone who not only cleared that, but went on to support their game for years and then gave notice that it had ended rather than disappearing into the aether.

[GraySky]

As far as feedback goes, I think that the image generator controversy is obviously the big one. We don’t need to rehash all of that here, but in general I would say that if it ever feels like you are fighting your entire playerbase over something they feel is either extortive or a fundamental privacy violation, it is probably worth stepping back and reassessing. I do think that it took you way too long to come around to preserving an offline mode for people who had no interest in dynamic image generation after it became clear what the overwhelming community consensus was. However, I respect that you stayed here and argued your side rather than going silent on the issue.

Secondary things I would mention:

1. I never liked the bronze/silver/gold tiers of the Patreon being tied to different release dates - it bloated the number of posts and updates and made it harder to navigate the Patreon page, and it also felt like a weird way of trying to push people towards accepting a higher price-per-sub than comparable games.

2. Getting your code organized so that it’s in a maintainable state and supports future extension is obviously easier said that done, but it cannot be stressed how important it is to start moving in that direction as early as possible. I remember posts from three years ago where people were highlighting areas in need of refactor that had these horrible twenty-case conditionals, and I am sure that that contributed to the proliferation and persistence of bugs around the same time. I personally got hit with that infuriating one where you can’t exit the kidnapping loop (and you aren’t 100% sure it’s a bug until you’ve sunk a ton of time trying to).

On a more positive note:

• I always appreciated the quality of your renders - very well-done!
• As mentioned in my post above, many of the most ambitious games I’ve seen get hype on here never actually make it into a playable form - congratulations on not only doing that, but for sticking with it for six years!
• Good on you for announcing the cancellation and not just letting the game trail off into eternity with no official closure.

[tiggertoo]

As one of the devs mentioned by @Graysky, I’d also argue that monthly updates aren’t feasible for a game of any decent size, if they’re being worked on by a single dev in their free time. I know from experience just how hard it is to hit deadlines, especially when you have other stuff in your life that takes up time.