​RE: Issues with February Builds

Hello everyone,

tl;dr at the bottom for those who want it.

I’d like to thank everybody for the warm reception to the February releases. There was some great stuff this month and we’re really proud of what we’ve achieved.

But with that out of the way, I want to take the time to address the issues that many people are experiencing with the current versions of Sileo.

Upon the release of the visual update, this also marked the introduction of the new 7.4 versions of the Ren’Py engine. Prior releases used the older 7.3 version. These things coinciding is no accident. We had tested a visual update several months earlier however decided against proceeding with it at that time as the downscaling of higher resolution assets produced subpar results on older systems during our testing. This is something the 7.4 update addressed which entered Pre-Release around the beginning of December which just so happened to be when we had planned to revisit the idea. As such, development of the visual update was carried out. The visual update was released to Patreon in January running the first stable 7.4 release, for which no issues were reported on any platform. The 0.17.1 build released to the Public on this month still utilized the 7.3 core.

Fast forward to the February releases which debuted yesterday. Both the Patreon and Public releases were launched using Ren’Py 7.4.1.1270 as a core. Our internal testing, while brief due to time constraints, returned no issues. Once these builds were released however, we received a significant number of reports concerning problems with these builds. In particular, the Android version stood out as being notably problematic.

A huge thanks to everyone who has reported these issues to us, be it on Patreon, on Itch, on Discord or elsewhere. If we don’t know what’s happening, we can’t fix the problems, so we really appreciate it that you took the time to get in touch with us. Furthermore, I’d like to offer assurance that we’re taking every report seriously and investigating each and every one.

Unfortunately, this is the part where things get complicated. You see, these investigations with only an explicit few exceptions, all indicate the same thing: Almost all of the issues with the February releases are problems with the 7.4 release of Ren’Py.

Rolling back to 7.3 is not an option as the visual upgrade does not work well on this version of the engine. One is rolling back to 7.4.0, the version of Ren’Py the January Patreon release was built on. However, doing so does not guarantee that any issues would be fixed. After all, our Patreon builds release to a much smaller demographic. There’s a strong probability that many of the issues with the current releases existed in those builds and simply weren’t reported to us.

Of course, our priority as a team is to get things working properly again as soon as possible. Unfortunately, with the source of these problems being believed to be Ren’Py and our releases being essentially stuck on the new version of Ren’Py, this leaves us without a great deal of recourse.

As of right now, there are new versions of Sileo available across both of our channels, 0.21b and 0.20.2b respectively. This version updates the Ren’Py core to 7.4.2.1292 which is the current stable release at the time of writing. We know that this version addresses known issues on both Windows and Android. It also addresses a crash that occurs on Day 11 of Diego’s route across both versions of the game and corrects a minor dialogue issue on Day 7 of Tai’s route. It is strongly suggested that you update.

Furthermore, we will list some known issues at the bottom of this post. Ren’Py update notes being what they are, we won’t always know if an engine update has fixed these issues, so even if the issues are posted below, please let us know if they happen to you! You can report a bug on Discord or here. And please don’t be shy, the more information we have the more we can do to fix things!

Beyond that, we’re really sorry about the state of these releases! We’ll endeavor to keep this post up to date with the latest relevant info but for the most up to date information, please check out our Discord: https://discord.gg/NeHkT64RzB

Thank you all for your patience!

tl;dr: The update to Ren'Py 7.4 broke some things, and we're kind of stuck on 7.4 because the visual update more or less requires it to work properly. We've released a new update alongside this post which does address a number of known problems, both with the Ren'Py core and a couple of small issues in Sileo itself. We don't expect this update to fix everything though, so stay tuned.

Currently Known Issues. 

Note that issues that aren't crossed out may have been fixed by a Ren'Py update if the changelog for said Ren'Py update did not list or clearly coincide with an issue. Please do let us know if an update fixed a problem for you, and please continue to report the issues below.

• Fixed: Crash on Diego Day 11. This was a Sileo problem. Fixed in 'b' revision.
• Fixed: Axel Dialogue Error on Tai Day 7. This was a Sileo problem. Fixed in 'b' revision.
• Fixed: Windows Script Host Error: "*\say.vbs". This was a Ren'Py problem. Fixed in Ren'Py 7.4.2, released in  'b' revision.
• Save File Deletion. There is a known issue where in rare situations a users save files are deleted by the game. The only proper reports we've had of this issue relate to the Android version of the game and the cause is not known. It is suspected to be related to the newer builds of Ren'Py, but even this confirmed. If this happened to you, please let us know. 
• Closed: Antivirus 'Trojan' False Positive. There is a known issue where certain antivirus products, most notably Windows Defender bundled with Windows 10, detects the game archive as containing a trojan. This is an issue on both the Public and Patreon releases. Please know that this is a False Positive and that these releases contain no virus. It is safe to play these versions. This appears to relate to the new build process in 7.4.X versions of Ren'Py and how it applies the games icon to the 32-bit executable for the game. Starting with the March releases, the icon will no longer display for 32-bit versions of the game which stops most antivirus products from picking this up. Unfortunately, the only total solution possible on our end would be to remove 32-bit support entirely which is not something we're quite willing to do just yet. Unless something changes in Ren'Py that stops this from occurring, this issue will never be completely resolved.
• Closed: Poor Scaling Quality on a few Android Devices. There is a known issue on a small range of low-end Android devices where scaling appearance is poor, resulting in very ugly, jagged graphics. With extensive testing, we have determined that this is not a Sileo issue, although we don't know specifically whether it is Android, Ren'Py or the GLES renderer that is responsible. These things are unfortunately out of our hands and we can only hope that it will be addressed in a future update to Ren'Py. Note that for whatever reason, Ren'Py defaults to using the GLES renderer on Android instead of the GLES2 renderer, regardless of what is available. The GLES2 renderer resolves this problem and can be forced by either connecting a physical keyboard to your device or using an app called 'Hacker Keyboard' to press Shift+G ingame. Please also read the section below about Sileo's system requirements.
• Closed: Game Freezes on Splash Screen on Android Devices. There is a known issue on Android where after having started the game, you are unable to interact with it, IE: No buttons are responsive. This is not a Sileo issue and we believe this is a Ren'Py issue in the new 7.4 builds of the engine. The reason why this happens is that certain Accessibility Services in Android are now interfering with Ren'Pys ability to receive input. This can usually be fixed by opening the accessibility settings on your phone and disabling the services listed at the bottom as being enabled. If this fixes the issue, feel free to turn them back on one by one until you find the specific culprit. So far, the MacroDroid UI Interaction Service is known to cause this issue, but the problem may not be limited to just this one service.

Important: Sileo's Minimum System Memory Requirements
With the last public update making a significant improvement to Sileo's visual appearance, the system requirements have understandably increased. That being said, Sileo will still run quite happily on everything but the most rudimentary devices. 

Android devices, lacking in any dedicated VRAM, are required to have greater than 1GB of RAM. 2GB is known to be sufficient as of 0.21b. The exact minimum requirement will vary from device to device and between Android versions. 

Other platforms will vary significantly, however 4GB is known to be sufficient for Windows users without dedicated memory. How much less you could get away with is not yet known.

Linux and Mac system requirements are probably less than Windows, but once again, this will vary. 

In terms of other requirements, there isn't really a whole lot to say. Sileo can and will run on a potato, so long as that potato has enough memory. It's honestly impressive just how little you need, with netbook CPU's like the Celeron N3050 and ancient SOC's like the Snapdragon 600 managing to run the game without issue, albeit with some slowdown present on both.