Biweekly Progress Report - 3-30-2026 (Medication issues, cutscene and VO work)
Hey everyone, another 2 weeks has passed and so we're here with another progress report. Unfortunately, I don't have too much of an update to give you this week; I was dealing with some medication withdrawals - again - but I'll get into those details in a bit. Suffice it to say my attempts at productivity didn't go so great, so this will be a pretty short post and I don't really have anything visual to show off. My apologies for that, but at the very least I owe you guys proper and consistent communication, like I used to do, so I'm determined to at least keep up these biweekly reports even if there's not much to talk about. I'm also optimistic that the worst is behind me and things will get better over this next week or two, but more details on that later.
Before anything else, here's our daily updates since the last progress report:
The little CPE work I did manage to do these past two weeks was mostly cutscene and VO-related stuff, as well as some more work on Partner Abilities. I've gone through and done VO audio editing for most of the cutscenes in v0.49, though there's still a bit left to do there, and the cutscenes themselves still need implementation. That's the biggest chunk of work left before v0.49 can be released, and it will still be a bit before we can get it all finished, but it's really exciting to see it all come together; I'm much happier with the state of CPE's story after all this is done, and I can't wait for you guys to see it.
I've also been getting back into working on some personal projects lately, as an outlet for some of the burnout of working on one project for so long. I don't write those days of productivity down in our daily updates, since it's not directly related to CPE, but I think it's been really good for me - I've been feeling more motivated to create things lately, both personal projects and CPE itself.
I'm especially glad for that since, as mentioned earlier in the post, I've been fighting through some medication withdrawals again. This isn't the first time I've talked about them recently; I'm not on many medications right now, but the main one was an antidepressant. Ever since the incident last year where my doctor's systems were hacked by some random dickhead, causing a ton of technical issues on their end, my doctor hasn't been giving me refills the way they used to. Normally when I got a prescription, I would get a 30 day supply, and usually around 2-3 refills where all I have to do is call an automated pharmacy line and punch in some numbers to get a refill. I haven't been getting any of those refills lately, and I basically have to go through the process of getting permission from my doctor every single time I need a refill, which takes several additional days and basically guarantees I run out of pills before getting more - not to mention I'd almost rather cut off my own ear than deal with actual phone calls.
In any case, at this point I'm just so fed up with it that I decided to take the last handful of pills from my last batch, and taper off the dosage myself. I know this is generally a terrible idea, but I was on a relatively low dosage to begin with, and I started doing this a few weeks ago now. I actually didn't notice any negative effects for a while (though I wouldn't be surprised if some of the sleep issues I've been having are related), but I reached the end of my plan and ran out of pills early last week, and I've definitely hit some withdrawals. My depression levels had been really low lately, what with the return to streaming and my productivity getting so much better, but it came back pretty hard last week and I didn't get much of anything done, aside from a bit of work on those personal projects.
The GOOD news is, as of right now, I'm feeling quite a bit better after the weekend, so I'm fairly optimistic the worst of the withdrawals are behind me! That said, I do want to be clear that if the effects of being off the antidepressant continue to be bad, then I will get back on it; this won't become a lingering issue that screws up my productivity for months again. But things have been getting a lot better for me mentally, and the hassle of dealing with keeping this prescription amidst all of my doctor's technical issues was causing me stress in and of itself, so I want to try toughing through it to see if I'm in a good enough place to be off medication. I really appreciate your understanding while I work through that; I don't feel great about having a blip in productivity like this, after we finally got on a decent schedule again, but I'm not going to let it grow into a bigger issue.
Well, that's about all I have to talk about for this update. The next few probably won't be much more interesting visually-speaking, since I'm still mostly working on very spoilery things that I can't really post about, but we'll probably have some sneak peaks here and there at least! Thank you all for reading, and for being as understanding and supportive as you always are. We're still aiming to stream twice a week (usually some combination of Wed/Thurs/Fri lately), so I hope to see you there, but if not then we'll see you again in 2 weeks with the next progress report!