Hi everyone!
I'm up pretty late to write this (about 3 am) so please forgive any minor grammar/spelling mistakes.
I am just writing this post to announce that if I finish my workflow tasking tomorrow (Thursday technically now so I guess tonight) then I will be finished with the initial writing/rendering stage which I call the content generation stage.
After this is done, I move formally to editing which includes music, dialogue edits, render fixes, in depth play testing (especially flags from prior choices and how things branch properly for future updates). My major concern with testing this time around is definitely save compatibility and how it overall tests with all the flags I have used in the past. I am not really a tech person at all, so this is the most scary element for me.
I do not know how long I will take to finalize all editing, but generally it has been between 1-2 weeks in the past. If there are no major problems/hiccups during testing, it may be out before the end of this month. (this has always been my goal since maybe October or so when I finished a presentation on the 27th)
I will take a full day of rest Friday (or a little bit to wrap up last tweaks for content generation) and then sleep like 12 hours until Saturday so I can approach this phase with a fresh mind/perspective. I've been grinding pretty hard the last 13 days or so (I think it will be almost 400 renders just from this time period) with very little sleep, so it's time to rest a day!
Here are my estimated render counts for Test Version Episode 8, Part I which I will formally call Episode 0.8TPart1
Dom Path: 1128
Secret Sub: 189
Main Branch (all can see): 464
Sub Path: 1,434
All renders: 3,215
Keep in mind I will announce with the Test Version what scenes are missing and still coming for the Final Version of 0.8. So I always recommend people to eventually make saves under the FINAL version of this first part of 0.8 which will end up 0.8P1Final versus the Test Version of 0.8TPart1. The biggest reason for this recommendation is because I will be adding a few new choice flags that currently are not in Test. (I need to fine tune how to calculate the flag points for Part II and want to get feedback on it from certain players I trust) So if you carry over a Test Version save, and I've added a new important flag afterwards, you might miss that branch in Part II.
I hope everyone has a blessed year in 2024! I do not believe 2023 could have gone any better for me from a professional standpoint, so I feel very fortunate and lucky. I have always had a goal of a very specific net worth by 35, and now I believe I am going to hit it before 30. I also have had a very good personal thing happen to me recently, so I kind of feel on the proverbial Cloud 9 even though I'm so tired right now too, hehe.
I will be taking a seven day trip overseas in mid-February to start a formal preliminary planning overview of our big client we got in October 2023 but I will still be working on the game too. (more likely at that point the start of Episode 8, Part II or last minute tweaks to get out the Final Version) I'll be upgrading both my main computer (to an RTX 4090) and a new laptop (not sure it can do renders but will get a very nice one anyway) after this 0.8P1Final is out. I didn't want to try and mess with anything being so close to the update with transferring over files, etc. (especially when I had a nasty SSD crash earlier last year!)
When I release Test, I will have a long laundry list of things I want to add for Final and it will depend on what I got in Test. For example, the lowest priority on my Test Version list is animations, the most important are proper branching flags/dialogue edits/render edits, and then something like music is lower priority but higher than animations. Meaning that if everything else is done on Jan 30 or so EXCEPT animations for a release, I may just choose to release it and put it all on Final.
Last, I always appreciate anyone that is kind enough to send me a nice word or just that they enjoy the game. While I admit I primarily do the game for my own creative reasons (and just the fun of it), I always hope people have fun too!
I have also finally kind of moved past caring too much about harassment/haters as well, as I finally realized my life is so fortunate and blessed and that I shouldn't let that bring me down very much in the grand scheme of life. In the end, if you wake up feeling excited to be alive every day, why let yourself be brought down? I guess it's the old adage the best revenge is a life well lived and I'm very, very, lucky that it's true right now.
Thanks to everyone for their patience and support! I know I'm not exactly a speed demon with progress, but I am always working hard and I am still proud that I have basically never missed a weekly update yet (absent moving it off a day or two for specific reasons) to my Patrons! (even if the week was bad, hehe) When you have to do weekly updates, it gives you no excuse to be lazy because you have to face the music and be accountable, hehe.
Ok, I'm rambling (late night brain fog) but seriously, thank you all and I will keep working hard and doing my best to get out the update! Love you all, thanks!
Tess
