Hi all,
I hope you're all doing ok, and not cooking in the heat as much as I am.
Not much in the way of a personal update this time around. I’m still just working full time (and then some… and then even more) on OS both Chapter 10 and Steam preparations. Though what I earn through Patreon and other platforms, less the game’s expenses, are still nowhere near enough for me to survive off. Hell, with the number of hours I’m really putting in, I’m not even anywhere close to earning “minimum wage” through this.
But again, Steam could solve that. So, I’ll crack on as I am for now and continue to survive off the payout I got from being made redundant from my last job until I can’t anymore.
Just a couple of short updates this time around.
Season 1 Steam Release
So, after integrating the two translations I have (so far) finally into the game and replacing the music that I needed to, a build has been submitted to steam and currently in the review process. I already had to fix a couple of things and resubmit yesterday, so fingers crossed there won’t be much more to fix. As soon as I get an approval, I will decide on a release date and announce it. That is… if I get an approval. I’d be lying if I said I wasn't shitting myself about being rejected for some random reason after all this time and work.
On another note, I’ve also added some steam achievements in, though given the early linearity of the game, I was very limited on the number of achievements I could have. So, don’t expect ridiculous amounts of achievements (like Chasing Sunsets which is over 200). I expect the Season 2 release will have significantly more.
Oh, and once I’m done getting Steam all sorted, I’ll update the Season 1 versions available elsewhere to include the translations and new music.
Chapter 10
I’m still working extremely hard on Chapter 10, and I’m half way through posing the final major scene. This scene is split into two parts - let’s call them “risk” and “reward”. “Risk” is a scene that I hope will justify the runner up win of Best Action on the GameStoryLog awards. I’m now currently working on “reward” now.
After this there’ll be a much smaller variation of the scene for those crazy enough to decline the reward. Then a couple of minor scenes to close out the chapter, just a few renders each, so I don’t expect those will take that long.
So, not long before I can start the final stages of getting this update ready, I hope, but that does include post work which is a lengthy process in itself. Render count is now at 1879, up roughly 400 from the last blog. It’s still expected to be a little over 2000 by the time I’m done.
I know this update has taken a little longer than previous but that was always going to be the case the less work I had done in advance of each release. Unfortunately, Chapter 8 was the point where I no longer had any work on the next chapter done upon release. On top of that, I'm juggling getting the steam release ready and dealing with all these translations at the same time… man there’s a lot of work.
But I promise I’m working my little butt off to get it to you as soon as I can.
Monthly Blogs
I only do monthly blogs because I feel like doing more frequent updates would become extremely repetitive for both me, and you reading them, and the content of my blogs would just be me regurgitating the same info every update. Hell, even after a monthly blog, I worry that I'm just repeating the same shit constantly.
It also allows me to post a single preview image with each blog and occasionally a tease about what to expect. If I was doing them more frequently, I’d have to calm down with the sneak peeks of things to come.
Still, I see all these other devs doing weekly updates and I wonder if I’m not giving you enough? So, I’m toying with the idea of doing two updates a month. Or maybe I do one major update of a similar size to this, with the preview… and then a smaller text only one between?
I also get some comments on the fact that these updates are behind a paywall… but that’s kind of the point. Still, I could maybe make the smaller update public too?
Drop a comment if you’d prefer more updates, are happy with the way things are, or have any other ideas I could think on.That’s it!
Appreciate you guys.JD