July 2025 Monthly Studio Report

July has wrapped up and we're moving along with it. Time for another monthly report!

We made a lot of progress in July but also had some set backs. When we entered the month, one of the things we wanted to do was get the gallery system working in The Father's Story. While it was straightforward according to the Naninovel guide, it ended up being anything but and actually ended up with us getting kicked from their Discord server.

What predicated it was simply the gallery not working as it should. We reached out to Naninovel and were met with silence. So we dug more. Given we hadn't updated the version of Naninovel or Unity for some time, there was the possibility that we needed to update it, which we did.

Now, yes, we do keep backups of older versions but, we'd rather not have to redo stuff if we don't have to. Upon updating to the current 1.20 version and Unity 6, everything went haywire. The changes the developer put into Naninovel between 1.18 and 1.20 basically changed a whole lot of the backend and how the file system works. Enough where all old projects would never function properly again and the only way to get them to work would be to redo the entire project from the ground up. During the process of seeking assistance, it was discovered that the Naninovel developer hides a disclaimer in his EULA which basically states that after a year of support, "F-Off!" in more eloquent words. Meaning, you gotta buy another license to get help. This isn't detailed anywhere on the official pages or documentation. No other VN engine developer does this so naturally we confronted it. Long story short, the true intentions of the developer were revealed and after revealing this on the review page for the plugin, they gave us the boot and we're officially making The Father's Story the first and last title we make using their engine. Given how active and helpful the VN engine communities typically are, this certainly came as a shock.

While do think these devs have a right to make a living, their behavior and the fact that they purposely hide this from those who buy their plug-in, hits on some ethical problems which is where our problem comes in.

Thankfully, we were able to load an old build and transfer over to get the game back. However, during the process we found out, without their help, why things didn't work.

The problem comes down to both filesystem requirements and specific commands which, while inadvertently shown in examples on the guide, are not stated as being required. So the gallery system just needed a "CG/" added to the location names to get it all to work. Likewise, something similar in the point allocation system. Meaning, the guide is not written well in these spots. Ultimately, we got it all working and are continuing testing with both a PC and Mac version now in Alpha. The problems being so simple and yet rather annoying to find info on, combined with the developer's hostile nature towards fellow devs, just make us more committed to not deal with them again.

As such, we won't release any internal tools for porting scripts to nani format. Future development will likely change engines unless better options come out. If we still continue visual novel development, we may transition to Effector or even Renpy. Both of which have much healthier communities and devs which don't cast you away after a year. In August, we're going to be continuing testing and getting feedback from testers while we start getting final store page assets done and prepped for release. We also want to see if we can get achievements into the game for the 1.0 release but this may have to wait until we get that setup on the Steam page as well.

We're coming into the home stretch but their is still a bit to do. So till next month, thanks for following with us and we'll see you in the skies!