Well, it sure doesn't bode well for an end of the month release.
We're not going to give release dates, but as noted in earlier posts, we're definitely not going to release during December because that's suicide, November isn't gonna happen either. That's why I needed to sell my car and other things, to keep going until we're done.
Semantic is a bitch but we all asked for a date was 100% ready to be shipped
And this is what you'll get from now on. The next time we announce a release date, will be when the game is 100% ready to be put on Steam, with Steam having accepted it.
I think what I found ambiguous about the regular status updates that we've been receiving so far is that there's always a perception of work being done, but not exactly a clear indicator towards what end goal.
I'd be curious to see a progress report similar to the kind of breakdowns I've seen on some Ci-En projects where you have it broken into small sections and you get to see % progress by individual components.
Here's an example of what it would look like:
The problem with posts like these, are that they take up an enormous amount of time given the scope of our project; a lot of things are at various stages of completion, and so to list and check through everything, every week, and then write it out as such, would probably take up most of the day.
Remember, there's 350+ NPCs alone to account for, plus a significant amount of non-NPC cutscenes and cutscenes solely involving Faye/Vie.
A given cutscene goes through the following stages;
- Prep work
- (Coming up with the character, their backstory, their voice references, personality, speech patterns)
- Connecting things
- (What characters tie in with this character, what scenes affect this cutscene's choices (or if it's a databank, what scenes it affects), tying it into the overall worldbuilding/storyline)
- Actually writing the scene
- (Doing research on science/medicine/history/etc. when needed, proofreading, doing rough and final drafts, as well as flags, camera movement, music selection, sound effects, and other notation for when I plug the scene into the game)
- Creating a voice acting document/voice direction for the VAs
- (With references for how to say certain words unique to the game, context for each scene, etc.)
- Getting the voicework back from the VA and cutting it up
- (Adding/removing silence where needed, clicks, re-arranging sentences if needed, picking the best take)
- Sending the voicework to Lewd K. to get mastered
- (Writing a document listing what filters we want for each character, sound effects needing to be added to the dialogue, etc.)
- Sending that mastered audio to Frouge to put into the game
- Plugging the cutscene in, event by event, adjusting things as needed for cutscene/databank flow
- Testing the scene to make sure things work
- Sending the map file off to Frouge to implement in the game
Granted, all the Databanks are done (save for the Gold Databanks), but the remaining cutscenes that aren't implemented in-game and finished are all in various stages of this tree of events.
Trying to list off where each one is at, or giving a various percentage of each, would take an incredibly long amount of time that could be better put towards actually developing the game, as noted here;
It's better for devs to just stay quiet and work on the game if they care about releasing it, rather than constantly doing PR and talking to the community bullcrap.
Additionally, further complicating things is that the path to get a cutscene done (or anything in the game done, really) isn't always a straight line; for example, a voice actor might be sick or busy with other work so we need to wait longer for that one.
Or, there might be a mechanic we need implemented in the game for some cutscenes, like the special "null node" that Frouge just put in recently for characters hidden behind objects, so they aren't sitting on top of objects.
Or, there might be visuals we need implemented that were done already, but just weren't in-game, like the portal to and from the future, which is used in a few cutscenes.
Since Frouge has to stop what he's doing to implement those latter two things, that means that whatever he's working on has to come to a stop until he's done working on his stuff, which would then skew the % of completion in terms of "expect it to be done by this time" rate, leading to some people going "well, it says it's at 95%, why has it taken a week for that last 5%?!".
The same goes for doing things in reverse; Frouge might be waiting on me to deliver him a document detailing a specific mechanic, or we might need to go over something that isn't working as intended or doesn't look/play as intended, so both of us need to stop pure production/implementation of things as we talk about it and go over it to remedy whatever situation's come up.
For example, there was an issue with the True Final Boss fight yesterday where one of his attacks had an exploit that would have caused issues if players accidentally stumbled on it, only caught by a total accidental oversight, so we figured out a workaround to prevent it from happening without affecting the fight quality/presentation itself.
On top of all of this, for some events or cutscenes, the hardest part/biggest time-sink could be the prep phase, whereas for others, it's the writing phase, and for yet others, it's the implementation phase, leading to even more "incorrectly presented" data that would give a false impression of completion % or time left to complete a specific thing.
I don't know I'm just worried that all these delays are being caused by some perfectionist attempt at polishing every single obscure detail about the game that players won't really interact with for more than 1-2 seconds.
It's not this at all. Right now, the game is missing a lot of pure, core content, as noted in earlier posts.
We're saving the polishing obscure content stuff for post-release; right now, we just want to get the core, base game done. There's a
lot of stuff we're skipping polish on simply because we want to get it done as fast as possible.
I understand that it's a lot more complicated than that, but when I hear that that the game is projected to release a couple months in the future and then there's two years worth of delays it only makes me wonder how much polish can one add in what feels like another 50% of the game's development cycle.
As noted above, stuff just takes a lot of time on a small team. The smallest wrench in the works grinds everything to a halt, as everyone has to stop what they're doing to remedy the situation. With something the size of our game, small complications like that can arise almost daily, no matter how much planning or foresight you have into things.
On large AAA 500+ person teams, those same complications arise, but you've got 500+ people to handle it; 10 of them can tackle a problem, while the other 490 can continue being productive. In our case, we just don't have that luxury.
We definitely under-estimated how long it'd take to get things done, which is why going forward, there'll be no release dates until the game is ready to be shipped, and that goes for future games, too.
If people feel we're "milking the patreon" (despite it not keeping us afloat for well over a year and a half now), they're free to request a full refund, as they've always been.
I remember playing the Electric Level Demo (0.27), the game was quite innovative for its time, but I imagine the delays have only hurt its momentum and it will start to show its age. By this I mean that other projects might've popped on the market that are exploring more innovative approaches to some of the mechanics/kinks/etc.
That's fine; we're not in this as a competition. Also, we're confident the full game will be a much, much better experience than the Steam demo is, and as far as sales go, we're at 47,000 wishlists so I don't think there'll be much issue in terms of sales provided we get the complete game out at launch.
delaying the project further will only hurt its popularity...
Yes, this is true.
However, putting the game out with core content missing would do far, far worse for it, and it'd be a betrayal for the people buying the game, as well. We don't want to do that at all costs, as long as we can financially hold out for.
Those players deserve better than something kicked out the door, incomplete. We're the ones who took as long as we did and made the mistakes we did, so we don't really care about how much it hurts us, we just care about the experience for the player.
