Weekly report 167
Hi, everybody.
I hope you've had a good week despite the scorchingly hot weather, especially if you live in the northern hemisphere.
Our report this week will be brief, mainly because we did more of what we had done last week: Chestnut worked only on cutscenes, and I wrote, edited, and posed scenes from Gomira's second quest (I'm still in the beginning parts of it).
For the rest of this report, I want to address an issue that I think should not be ignored: our development time for the 0.7 content.
We released our previous update on the 31st of July of last year, so it's almost a year since an update, and I completely understand that many of you who have supported us simply because you like our game and want to see us succeed are unhappy with our rate of output. It's frustrating to know that we're not doing as well as you think we should. We owe you, our patrons, everything when it comes to being able to work on the game full-time and take care of our family, and I don't want to fail you.
There's a lot that I'd like to do but can't, but the least I can do is explain why it has taken us this long to develop 0.7, and what we're doing to shorten it. Whether our reasons are valid or not, I'll leave to your judgment:
Shortly after the release of 0.6, when we had taken a short break, had done the planning phase of 0.7, and had started with the writing and the earlier tasks, we had our second baby. Our newborn was completely different from our first child and required a lot more attention from us, and that was the first circumstance that noticeably impacted the number of hours we could dedicate to work at that time.
The second circumstance happened in January when I had two back-to-back surgeries that crippled me for a while, leaving most of the work on Chestnut's shoulders.
In both of these instances, we discussed and considered pausing Patreon for a month or two but decided that that would essentially halt the project because, despite having a baby and the surgeries, we were trying to put as many hours a day as we could into development. The hours were admittedly less than before, but they moved the project forward.
It has been a few months now that we have gotten back into our old routine, not as well as before we had our baby (I used to clock 8-10 hours a day, seven days a week, now I do 7-8 hours, still seven days a week), but the impact of those months is there. Add to that the fact that Gomira's update has more words than any of our previous releases, translating into more content that needs to be posed, edited, tested, and, of course, created art for.
To move things faster, we have been working seven days a week and stopped taking breaks (except when necessary for the baby). People ask me for release dates, and I'm sorry because although we have internal deadlines that we try to reach, I cannot share them. All I can say is that we're trying very hard to have this release ready as soon as we can.
Have a great weekend.
Cheers
