New post!
About the difficulties encountered in the development of version 0.23 and the voting results
Hello everyone!
Well, there hasn’t been much news this month, so I’ll try to make up for the lack of updates with this post.
I didn’t want to complain to you again about my health, but I think it’s necessary to share so you’re kept in the loop.
Two years ago, I started experiencing dizziness after eating, but I was able to treat it with medication and a balanced diet. At least, it seemed to me that I had cured everything. However, about a month and a half to two months ago, I started experiencing severe dizziness again. At first, I thought it was related to food and my digestive system, but it turned out this time it wasn’t.
Because this painful condition dragged on, I couldn’t sit at the computer for long; the dizziness hindered my productivity. I had already completed the line art for all the illustrations for the update back then, and due to my condition, we planned to hire an artist to color the images to speed up the update release. Fortunately, my coloring style isn’t too complex, and I thought an average artist could manage it, at least under my guidance. As a result, we hired an artist for the coloring work, who worked with us for the last two months.
In short, the artist didn’t meet expectations. To be specific, he missed all the deadlines twice, completing less than a third of the agreed-upon work. During this time, I was visiting doctors, undergoing examinations, and going through various procedures. At the same time, on the doctors' recommendations, I started trying to go outside more, take walks, exercise, and generally be more active to feel better.
Eventually, I discovered the problem. It turned out that the culprits were just systematic lack of sleep, overwork, and a sedentary lifestyle (nothing surprising there).
The last couple of days, I’ve been feeling better; I was prescribed some medication to improve my well-being, so I sat down to finish coloring the remaining scenes myself. Overall, I’m now just trying to walk a bit more and spend a bit less time at the computer. If I summarize what’s happening without too many details, that’s about it.
In the future, we plan to try hiring another artist for coloring the images. Now the selection process will be stricter, and we’ll monitor how responsibly the person approaches their duties from the very first works, keeping an eye on their work speed.
On a positive note: Three new scenes have already been sent for animation creation, and in the coming days, I will write a technical assignment for our programmer.
Also, thanks to a kind-hearted person, our game will now feature a Chinese language option (for now, the translation will be available until version 0.22).
Now, let’s move on to the voting topic. This week, in the vote for the second character in update 0.23, Gwen Tennyson from the animated series "BEN 10" won by a huge margin. The scene with her is already in development.
Ahead of us, we have voting on which of the old scenes you want to see animated this time. We also plan to change the voting structure regarding which characters to add to the game. After closely examining the current voting process, we realized that voting among $20 patrons takes a whole week but has no impact on the final results. Therefore, now $20 patrons can suggest their characters, and everyone who sponsors at $10 or more can vote for them. This way, the voting process will be faster, and it won’t stall the development process.
I think that’s all for now. Thank you for your attention and understanding! We’ll do our best to finish the update as soon as possible since we’re already in the final stages of development. And don’t take sleep deprivation lightly, as my story may sooner or later affect anyone. Take care of yourselves!