- Jul 17, 2020
- 326
- 292
You know what, you're a cool dude.Myrtle, Holly, and Gomira, based on a public poll on our Patreon page.
Would you rather I didn't answer questions? I'll repeat Tlaero's question, which I believe you ignored: what are you asking me to do differently?
We are two people working full-time seven days a week, it's not been six months, there are more than a few artworks added with each update (although whether they're enough or not is, of course, subjective), and we mostly know what we're doing, but other times we get things wrong and go back and fix them, experiment, and try to come up with new ideas to improve the game. But all these aside, could you tell me what bugs you encountered? I'd like to fix them for the next update if possible.
If you still haven't found it, there's one pinned to the help channel of our discord server.
I don't know whether it's typical for games to take longer to develop the more popular they get, but no, we don't want it to become typical in our case. You're wrong about 'milking' not being evil or malicious, though. If I accept people's donations on the promise of working on a project, I'm morally obligated to do the best work I can and do it as honestly and transparently as I'm capable of. Things go wrong, of course, but that's a different story. Please note that I'm talking about my game and am not referring to any other game or developer (I know very little about other devs, and each person or team has their own approach and relationship/understanding with their patrons).
Now about 0.5, the current release cycle is caused by us wanting to have a sense of 'completion' similar to the end of 0.4. 0.5, however, is one continuous story, and events have to happen before that satisfying end is achieved. Basically, had we taken different design decisions, for example, had we broken up the main story update into two parts (similar to 0.1 and 0.2) the result would have been different. It's a lesson to learn for continuous story updates, in contrast to side-quests, rather than a model to copy for future releases.
This is an answer I gave to someone with a similar question on Discord:
Creating 2d artworks takes time, and progress is not always linear. By that, I mean that we take the time to create something, but the result doesn't always work and has to be redone or improved. As an example, there are several artworks that we were so sure we would use that we even recorded and shared them on Patreon, but in the end, they didn't find their way to the update because they didn't match the direction that was better for the game. There are also two complete sprites (with some expressions) that we have not yet used but that at the time had to be created because we thought they were going to be used. It is a process that involves planning things, doing them, testing, and evaluating and fixing things when needed rather than releasing them out even though we think they don't work. That's true about the art, true about the writing, the posing, etc. Now that's one aspect of it. The other one is that the artworks need a lot of researching to create. Most of the videos you see on our Patreon (there are several public ones that you can access without being a patron) are at x5-x10 speed, and that's just the artwork and doesn't take the many hours that go into researching and adjusting things to look good.
Now that was about the art, which is I think most people will agree is one of the most important aspects of the game. For my part, every line of the text needs to be posed, and there are hundreds of them. This is not the typical approach, but it's a decision we made in 0.1 to have characters in a scene change with each line of dialogue and respond to it. 0.5 has over 4700+ lines, and every single one of them needs at least one sprite being called and changed. For example:
The simple line from Myrtle in 0.4 "But isn't Lady Goldenbush the ruler?" needed all of the characters present to have their sprites changed to match it. You can see Myrtle, the horse, Kevin, the MC, and Hammerdick, each having different facial expressions and body gestures. That's an extreme case since not every line is uttered in the presence of 5 characters, but most are done with 2 sprites (in 0.5, for example, the MC and Lana), and they need to be edited and posed one by one. Every 4700+ one of them.Python:show myrtle enarrow bdoubt hbneu2 rneu2 show horse bup ehalfb msad show kevin eneu show pov eneudown bup mneu show hammerdick ewidedown bdoubt mneu myrtle "But isn't Lady Goldenbush the ruler?"
Patrons choose which character/story we focus on next, but it is us who decide the poll options.
We're still in the fourth month (until tomorrow, actually). Most people ignore the qualification that it might vary depending on the story/circumstance and that 0.5 is one of them. We did not set out to take this long, but at this point, the only thing we can do is try to finish it as well and as fast as we can and apply what we've learned about releasing main story content to future updates. I would rather learn to plan better than remove that because I think patrons should know what they're supporting.
I update it every night before going to bed, but perhaps it doesn't register or show you the cached image. At any rate, if you don't see it here, check our website or discord server; it'll be there.
Check the Hidden Photos Locations in the OP.
Fᴏʀ ɴᴏᴡ >:^)
Also, will the characters have more animations apart from what is currently planned for them?
Last edited: