Not a complaint as much as a genuine question. Why go through so many steps when you can just have the fairies as a generated seed. Instead of uploading or downloading through some sketchy website you just share a code with someone and put it into the game. Faster, easier, safer and cheaper.
As I said before, the fairies cannot be a generated seed, there's just too much data (~10-50kb per fairy). When a fairy is generated, the appearance, name, bio, etc etc is all saved to the actual fairies object. These properties can be changed in the game, the fairies name and description is editable by the player. The fairy also keeps its meeting date, original partner, last visit, what she said last for callbacks, and other data that makes her exist. I really wanted to make the fairy, when generated, a unique instance that feels like she is someone. She exists as an object in the code and as a unique fairy in the game. Doing this gives me a ton of freedom to make them further unique in the future, I've barely scratched the surface on what I'd like to see them have. I hope that by doing this the fairies do feel like each one is themselves. For people who are saying this is 'too much' or 'overengineered' , this is still a passion project, that's how I wanted the fairies to exist, and honestly I didn't think so many people would be into it, but very thankful that is the case.
"Some sketchy website" - My website is my main home on the internet, it's been there since 2018, and I don't intend for it to go away anytime soon. I've paid for 10 years of hosting upfront. I don't really want to say much more about it other than I was a web developer in a previous life and the code has several sanitation checks on upload to make sure actual fairy data is being sent to the findr database. I can assure you my site is far safer than downloading my game from any 3rd party sources. If you are worried about my website, you probably shouldn't be installing my games to your hardware . That said I am just one developer doing this entire thing including the social media, website, game, art, animation etc. So I really hope people play nice with it.
I actually allowed JSON export / import in Interdimensional Engineer. And no one used it. I know for sure there are more savvy people who comment in here, but most people don't know what JSON is. It was too hard for people, and the data was too long to share. People were not copying the whole thing, missing } and the end, discord message length reached, etc, and ultimately I think I saw maybe one person use it and share it correctly. Having my website be the automated way people can upload and download that json payload and then use the phone number (id) to look up that fairy has been far more successful and easy for players. I put extra code into the fairy profile pages so that discord shows the image when the link is pasted. It's been far easier, and I think a far cooler experience also.
But, I get it. I'm also big on preservation. If my website ever goes down or I'm not making these games anymore, I'll share the back-end code and can even update the game to let you enter whatever endpoint you like. But I've been working on this game non-stop for months, I have plenty of planned updates for the game. I have the code backed up on my NAS and at an outside location also. It's not going away anytime soon.
