- Aug 4, 2020
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Imagine getting your hands on an EXPERIMENTAL build, then writing a gigantic post about how bad it is...
- Oct 17, 2021
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---Granted I do understand people get busy---
** (And before someone quotes my previous post, Yes I am checking on the very game/post I said I wouldn't. I am fallible)**
<3<3<3
Cheers,
Stayzie
** (And before someone quotes my previous post, Yes I am checking on the very game/post I said I wouldn't. I am fallible)**
Because I have had mad respect for the game and its development and I did monetarily support for 4 months. Whether its for this reason or that reason I do feel that a majority of your base funders do not want to have to go to discord to hear announcements. If they pledge, why should they come to your door to see how the project they helped fun is doing?
Just my opinion I could be wrong, But writing a paragraph or two (You code so im sure your wpm is over 120) And having a folder of bookmarks for lets say *Patreon, Itch, F95, and Subscribestar* stating the general going ons whether its NOTHING or LOTS. Summarize, then hit Control+A on your document and post it to your dev logs on each of those earmarked tabs.
This process would take 10 minutes to set up, 2-3 minutes to replicate on a bi-weekly basis. That way your fundbase doesn't get angry/bored/unsub. This would ultimately net you more followers, more funding, increasing your teamsize and production output.
Understand that from the people I have talked to its not an issue of so much what you put out, but a failure of communication to your paybase/fans. Be more vocal even if there isn't much progress. At the end of the day you can at very least know you did your part when it comes to keeping your funders in the loop.
To summarize Biweekly 2# paragraph summary of whats happening/not happening. Saying nothing happened is still information to satiate the base. Premade tabs in browser to update your different sub platforms all at once. Very easily done 10 minutes every 2 weeks should be doable if you schedule it out same time every 2 weeks and don't adhere. Do that for 2 months and watch your base enlarge by around 10% just because they know whats going on. Then again, I might be wrong, then again....What could it hurt right? Personally I thought this game would be the very best *top5 atleast* sex based games I have every played once it released. I guess I didn't understand how far the process was along at that point. Regardless of previous posts, I do want to see this succeed. The potential is astounding, the execution of keeping us informed is not. Please take this to heart, because it could make or break you in the longrun at least for this title.<3<3<3
Cheers,
Stayzie
Noooo, I am an artist, who learned to program by necessity, I've said this a lot. I do not consider myself a programmer and do not take pride in it like I do art. Ask the programmers I hire, I'm savy but I drive them legitimately crazy with the sketchy shit I do.
I borderline hunt and peck when typing. I'm "fast" at it but I'm using like 4 fingers max including my thumb for space bar.
When I make these update posts, I usually spend HOURS on them. Cause I need to remember everything that needs to be included, make images, render previews. I also tend to reread the whole post a lot. Also it's never just a copy and paste between sites, especially when there's images involved.
Like the post made for this release took me about 3 hours (guessing from the last commit, and first screenshot upload), usually I'm pretty sure it's longer cause I was trying to get the build ready right up until then and went to bed right after lol. It's never just two paragraphs it's a whole thing. This is the reason I primarily make updates monthly I pretty much lose a day of work to it. I think this year the only month I missed an update was February.
Usually the only sites that fall to the wayside in terms of dev updates is itch and (for now) mostly steam, but that's cause I tend to talor updates there.
Making two updates a month usually doesn't make sense cause most work takes all month, goals are setup that way. And making previews takes a lot of time (Missed opportunity, discovered a bug, etc). Like as you can see just getting a build release out took more than two weeks just cause of the bug fixes and issues. And it's not just my work, people I hire tend to have monthly deadlines.
IMO it's just better if people need to read fewer meaningful updates. And if you're already concerned about slow development that wouldn't help the situation
.Este jogo pode facilmente se tornar o melhor jogo do gênero ou algumas pessoas trabalhando, e jogos como Paralogue: Love Craft que tem apenas um jogo de pessoas trabalhando e não atualizando.
Damn people went from such reasonable artist such great dev to its another dong134 real fast. Almost as if someone who warned folks not that long ago in this exact thread that this dev is another case of cant or wont do shit plus downgrades the game with each update, wasnt being unreasonable but actually was right and befor one of you cucks comes and states that "iTs aN eXperImenTaL", yeah no shit sherlock it is. In the past the experimentals held the content that was added in the planned update just buggier then the actual update. This isnt anything different. I would have been surprised if even old features were getting added back in or any new proper interactions were coming. This game has been "in development" for over 2 years now. Other projects have been put on hold, the patreon goal of 6 fucking thousand euros states that "its not going to replace their fulltime jobs". Fellas, do me a favour and look at price for freedom. Didnt buy it at first cause it wasnt worth the money for me, but the dev actually took the patreon money he got and made something that even during the early alpha overshadowed this shit by far and now is a really fkin good game. Do yourself a favour and unpleadge, get something like price for freedom or life with a slave instead. Devs more active, you know theres actual content coming within a reasonable time frame and releases arent buggy messes like this. I would have loved to see our apartment finished because it had so much potential but face it, its dead and more of a cash grab with scraps thrown out every now and then to keep people pledged then anything thatll ever be finished.
Paragraphs and chill please. Unlike Alorth, at least this guy is doing just one game at a time and isn't constantly posting "Update this month" 3 months in a row, without an update.
- Aug 4, 2020
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wait a fuckin...he's making 3600 per month...okay, we're getting ripped off lol
for the progress that he's making, giving him 3600 per month is absolutely ridiculous
don;t think he's a bad dev, but still, for that money he could do this full time COMFORTABLY
Please review this post, I do do this full time.
https://f95zone.to/threads/our-apartment-v0-2-7-d-momoiro-software.39842/post-8287634
The Patreon page can't be updated cause Patreon wants me to add my name, and I really don't want to do that cause I'm worried about Paypal. The goals are from way back when the project started as a two person team over 2 years ago. Most of the information on the patreon page is very old.
I'm not updating it until the steam release, cause at that point I won't care what patreon/paypal does.
- Oct 17, 2021
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Look what I am trying to strive to get across is that the general person doesn't need those detailed notes on where your at per update but a stable broad overview easily typed with minimal though just the basics of the last 2 weeks, remember I said that even if there's no progress talk about it. You said you're an artist right? I can empathize because I myself went to college for Art *BA in Industrial Design but ended up swapping to getting a Associate degree in Digital business instead* And trust me when I say it makes a difference.Noooo, I am an artist, who learned to program by necessity, I've said this a lot. I do not consider myself a programmer and do not take pride in it like I do art. Ask the programmers I hire, I'm savy but I drive them legitimately crazy with the sketchy shit I do.
I borderline hunt and peck when typing. I'm "fast" at it but I'm using like 4 fingers max including my thumb for space bar.
When I make these update posts, I usually spend HOURS on them. Cause I need to remember everything that needs to be included, make images, render previews. I also tend to reread the whole post a lot. Also it's never just a copy and paste between sites, especially when there's images involved.
Like the post made for this release took me about 3 hours (guessing from the last commit, and first screenshot upload), usually I'm pretty sure it's longer cause I was trying to get the build ready right up until then and went to bed right after lol. It's never just two paragraphs it's a whole thing. This is the reason I primarily make updates monthly I pretty much lose a day of work to it. I think this year the only month I missed an update was February.
Usually the only sites that fall to the wayside in terms of dev updates is itch and (for now) mostly steam, but that's cause I tend to talor updates there.
Making two updates a month usually doesn't make sense cause most work takes all month, goals are setup that way. And making previews takes a lot of time (Missed opportunity, discovered a bug, etc). Like as you can see just getting a build release out took more than two weeks just cause of the bug fixes and issues. And it's not just my work, people I hire tend to have monthly deadlines.
IMO it's just better if people need to read fewer meaningful updates. And if you're already concerned about slow development that wouldn't help the situation
I understand putting something out that is less eloquent is not how you do things probably things Sac, and perhaps its worth finding someone in public relations or interpersonal communications who can facilitate the issue of paraphrasing your teams last 2 weeks of work. Its your project and ultimately what you do is up to you. But realistically you are making things much harder than they need to be. Overthinking it would be something very common to an artists mindset, so flush out the aspect and think from a outside perspective. Would you rather invest / keep investing in something you either:
A. Sporadic updates but the updates are well detailed down to the T. But the issue being that sometimes the company pushes back patches/ and or new content.
---or---
B. Updates on a monthly structured time-frame with a set schedule even if the updates are minimal or nothing at all, said company gives less detailed notes but a broader perspective of the things being done. Take in mind this company is complicit in their updates and they are released at 1pm EST* every 9th of the month.
Just some food for thought, I mean more money in your pocket is never a bad thing right? ***Inb4 some cuck saying some stupid unrelated thing about where said money in pocket was gained from***
From a former Artist who sold out and went Corporate, Yours truly
Staybae
- Oct 17, 2021
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You have to HAVE to ride that line of selling out / not compromising artistically for a creation like this to fully succeed and make a profit. Otherwise it would suck to have something 70-80% done to a full complete non beta-build and end up losing all that progress to something *Anything external such a accidents / family / literally anything that forces you to be absent for a extended period of time that the project falls through* As a former creative I know the hardest and also most satisfying thing as a artist is to publish a piece of work period.
Whats harder is something that was simplistic in the beginning having evolved into something else. In my line of work I see it too often, where creatives give too much or too little control to the public/funding source* and it suffers. And if you truly are a creative deeply involved in that mindset being analytical is polar opposite of how your brain functions. Considering that analytical function is usually very dormant in creatives and vise versa in the analytical. Much like hiring out programmers for specific coding of your game, perhaps finding someone do public relations would save you in the long run also.
If you're really thinking it wouldn't make a difference let me just iterate that ALL companies whether low-mid-high-fortune 500 have a public relations correspondent sooner or later. If you think the cost is high, truly its quite cheat since it's mostly just short paraphrasing and a general team leader project breakdown less that a hours work every month. Something you could find in the range of $50-150 a month. At least for a small company such as yours. And before you say, *cannot afford it* which most smaller companies think this, the revenue generated from having this position filled with an experienced professional more than quadruples the amount of the cost of the position itself inside of 2 quarters.
Anyway, more food for thought, I do hope you understand that I am speaking from a position of everyday experience with this very thing, although it's been a long time since I have given free advice such as this but then again, I want to see this project realize its full potential and succeed. Usually I would have a 2 year forecast/projections/market expanse/department overhead but I don't work for smaller companies anymore, I have a family to provide for and can't afford the pay-cuts. Hopefully you take this to heart, <3
Cheers once again lol,
Staybeezy
**Case in point, this Artist was once merely a Disk Jockey, Sure he sold out, but his Tempurpedic bed, Chronic Edition is lined with 100's**
Whats harder is something that was simplistic in the beginning having evolved into something else. In my line of work I see it too often, where creatives give too much or too little control to the public/funding source* and it suffers. And if you truly are a creative deeply involved in that mindset being analytical is polar opposite of how your brain functions. Considering that analytical function is usually very dormant in creatives and vise versa in the analytical. Much like hiring out programmers for specific coding of your game, perhaps finding someone do public relations would save you in the long run also.
If you're really thinking it wouldn't make a difference let me just iterate that ALL companies whether low-mid-high-fortune 500 have a public relations correspondent sooner or later. If you think the cost is high, truly its quite cheat since it's mostly just short paraphrasing and a general team leader project breakdown less that a hours work every month. Something you could find in the range of $50-150 a month. At least for a small company such as yours. And before you say, *cannot afford it* which most smaller companies think this, the revenue generated from having this position filled with an experienced professional more than quadruples the amount of the cost of the position itself inside of 2 quarters.
Anyway, more food for thought, I do hope you understand that I am speaking from a position of everyday experience with this very thing, although it's been a long time since I have given free advice such as this but then again, I want to see this project realize its full potential and succeed. Usually I would have a 2 year forecast/projections/market expanse/department overhead but I don't work for smaller companies anymore, I have a family to provide for and can't afford the pay-cuts. Hopefully you take this to heart, <3
Cheers once again lol,
Staybeezy
**Case in point, this Artist was once merely a Disk Jockey, Sure he sold out, but his Tempurpedic bed, Chronic Edition is lined with 100's**
- Sep 7, 2017
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I'll speak as someone who does both some light game dev and someone who just likes browsing this forum for neat shit.
For my own projects, I usually keep people in the dark except when I have something to say. Posting regularly when all I have to say is "We're working on this, we swear. There is no other news." like 80% of the time feels pretty pointless in a way because there's no meaningful message. It's just a sign of life, and you already get signs of life from me or other project members because they're doing literally anything in the Discord. I've gone months on end with no news only to show up with like 3000 words on an update announcement, and it's worked out okay for me.
That being said, I think I can only get away with that because it's part of my community's culture, i.e. that's what they've come to expect, and they don't really have a reason to expect any more. I don't make big stacks off of doing what I do, it's mostly just a hobby and any cash that comes in from it is just pocket change. These people don't pay anything to be there and get their hands on the product, so there's not really any obligation for me to do anything for them beyond keep the shit functional. When they get news, they get their news and move on with their day because it doesn't matter too much to these people beyond "Oh hey there's updates".
However, I will agree that if you've got a significant cashflow, then maybe some minor tidbits or something is warranted. I followed with the development of My Catgirl Maid and I still follow his posts to this day. He'll do monthly progress reports to let us know what he's been up to. He's currently working on a new game, so he'll show up with something like
I'll also add that for the shit I work on, I like dropping pictures and videos showing off new features as they're completed or reach mostly presentable states. I don't like batching everything together for one big post until it's time for an actual changelog or whatever. If your team's hard at work getting stuff on the production line, then I think this would be a nice way to simultaneously go "Hey, we're alive" and "Check out what you've been waiting for" in a fun manner. Shopping interface is mostly complete? Show off a quick video or GIF of you navigating around it and showing off the items. Sex sim dialogue buttons are there now? GIF of someone just clicking one showing off how it's used and what it does. That's just me, though; if you like batching stuff together for big update posts or something, suit yourself.
TLDR - I understand why having long, detailed update posts only when they're ready is desirable, and I also understand why you'd want regular announcements to indicate how a project is progressing, especially one that's being well-funded. I think it'd be good to just have quick, broad takes on what's been happening (e.g. "UI hasn't been playing nice and we've been stuck trying to fix it this month") on a regular basis to satisfy most people, and anyone who gives a shit about the nitty gritty will just have to wait for the big post that will break everything down for them.
For my own projects, I usually keep people in the dark except when I have something to say. Posting regularly when all I have to say is "We're working on this, we swear. There is no other news." like 80% of the time feels pretty pointless in a way because there's no meaningful message. It's just a sign of life, and you already get signs of life from me or other project members because they're doing literally anything in the Discord. I've gone months on end with no news only to show up with like 3000 words on an update announcement, and it's worked out okay for me.
That being said, I think I can only get away with that because it's part of my community's culture, i.e. that's what they've come to expect, and they don't really have a reason to expect any more. I don't make big stacks off of doing what I do, it's mostly just a hobby and any cash that comes in from it is just pocket change. These people don't pay anything to be there and get their hands on the product, so there's not really any obligation for me to do anything for them beyond keep the shit functional. When they get news, they get their news and move on with their day because it doesn't matter too much to these people beyond "Oh hey there's updates".
However, I will agree that if you've got a significant cashflow, then maybe some minor tidbits or something is warranted. I followed with the development of My Catgirl Maid and I still follow his posts to this day. He'll do monthly progress reports to let us know what he's been up to. He's currently working on a new game, so he'll show up with something like
You must be registered to see the links
where he summarizes what's been going on. Nothing fancy - no breakdowns of what exactly is being written or implemented, no pictures (admittedly, this project of his is not in a presentable state right now to begin with), etc. - just some "Yeah we've been working on the story" or "We've been wrestling with an unexpected UI bug for three weeks" posts. It's like a mildly awful middleground between having an announcement that's detailed enough to be useful and give the full picture of what's going on and a pointless heartbeat/sign of life acknowledgement post, but I think it's a decent option for quick, scheduled updates to paying customers.I'll also add that for the shit I work on, I like dropping pictures and videos showing off new features as they're completed or reach mostly presentable states. I don't like batching everything together for one big post until it's time for an actual changelog or whatever. If your team's hard at work getting stuff on the production line, then I think this would be a nice way to simultaneously go "Hey, we're alive" and "Check out what you've been waiting for" in a fun manner. Shopping interface is mostly complete? Show off a quick video or GIF of you navigating around it and showing off the items. Sex sim dialogue buttons are there now? GIF of someone just clicking one showing off how it's used and what it does. That's just me, though; if you like batching stuff together for big update posts or something, suit yourself.
TLDR - I understand why having long, detailed update posts only when they're ready is desirable, and I also understand why you'd want regular announcements to indicate how a project is progressing, especially one that's being well-funded. I think it'd be good to just have quick, broad takes on what's been happening (e.g. "UI hasn't been playing nice and we've been stuck trying to fix it this month") on a regular basis to satisfy most people, and anyone who gives a shit about the nitty gritty will just have to wait for the big post that will break everything down for them.
No, it would not, cause they would have to follow the development closely and understand the game. Else they would need it explained regularly and demonstrated which isn't much different. Maybe they would make very light updates but I'm not interested in those.
Again my updates are monthly, usually within the week of the last day of the month sometimes earlier. Check my post history. They're even titled "monthly". And I don't really have control over delays. Remember I hire people online, I'm not a studio.
Also in the B case I described the issue with releasing monthly build updates in the past. Two weeks of work that often slows development to a crawl. Remember what started this whole discussion, dude played a build leaked early and got frustrated cause it seemed to be broken the same way it was before meaning it seemed like no progress had been made.
The reality of that bug was that it technically wasn't a bug, what had happened is I had fixed a soft lock issue in build "a" and right before making build "b" I play tested confirmed some functionality ended playtest mode and made a build immediately. The fix isn't what broke Naomis arousal, it's that ending play mode early accidentally locked in a configuration change from a debuff making Naomis arousal negative.
This is the problem with releasing builds mid development, shits gonna happen. It's why these releases can take two weeks on their own, a lot of issues don't show until build time. And while finding those issues can be useful often they get nullified by later changes anyway.
Again, this is not a money thing.
I said earlier if it was a money thing, I would focus on lewd content which is what people say they really want. The complaint I get mostly isn't that the game has no updates, it's that it's updates they can't "see". It's not art or animations, or VA. And I get it, but it can't change until it's ready to. This is the problem, not how frequently I make other updates.
Thats why I'm not too interested in this game being one of those 10K per month games on patreon. In fact this game has grown despite my efforts to keep things fairly low key. Cause I KNOW this is a problem, but I can't in good conscience do anything about it. I KNOW the more money this project makes will breed the EXACT discussion above. And I'm basically running out of time on avoiding that inevitability.
But until I achieve what I've set out to do with the foundations of this game I can't focus on the art. Cause for me the art is meaningless without a good game behind it. And additionally, game development is about not reinventing the wheel every project. Making a good foundation that can be expanded upon and polished long term, is critical and makes up most of the biggest most well-liked games now (Dark Souls, Yakuza, Batman Arkham Games, Persona, etc).
I'm trying to be as responsible as possible with the opportunity people who support the project has given me. I'm making sure the people supporting now see the benefits long-term with more games to play that are made faster.
For people who want those micro updates I do provide them, LIVE actually, publicly. I just don't do it on patreon for the above reasons.
Also, about the gifs and such I currently try to make most of my dev updates public and on patreon I can't post anything remotely lewd. Besides the fact hosting gifs is annoying and patreon blocks most hosting solutions (like red gif) accidentally displaying something too lewd for patreons standards is an issue. Even visible panties can get you flagged.
SS does not have this limit so sometimes I add more images there.
Id definitely rather have someone post 3 months in a row update soon and update within 4 months then not getting shit for ages and when something drops its either something barely acceptable as content, pre assets ripped from somewhere else and fitted into your game or literally a downgrade from the previous version. Sounds like cope tbh. from someone who already spend 3 digits on "their" patreon
- Aug 4, 2020
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well fair enough then
still, I don't think you've lost people's trust yet including mine
please impress me enough to make me buy another porn game
Imagine complaining about this kind of stuff in 2022, when nearly all games basically beta.
- Aug 4, 2020
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honestly that is kind of sad...
I miss the times when I could boot up a game and play it top to bottom in one sitting without many bugs or looking up things on the internet...
Sure, there are still VERY good examples of that, but goddamn...the part of the industry that works by developing something fully then releasing it and a few patches later seems to be dying, and getting replaced with patreon randyes and EA-level anti-consumer garbage...
Unfortunately, all the download options on this link require you to pay or it'll take hours to download.
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