1. The upcoming release is the rest of Day 9. Which can sound super concerning given the time frame for it but to try and relieve that concern I'll say that the 5 months were packed full of real life getting in the way of the game and shouldn't be an issue in the future. I had an eye issue that sidelined me for an entire month (Which if anyone is curious I haven't had any issues with them recently), moved across the country, got married, and learned I was going to be a dad. So all of that in the span of a few months really slowed things down as I had to focus on them. But things are calming down now and I'll be able to shift my focus back to WVM when I return home.
Secondly, this upcoming update sets the stage for releases to spread out across multiple updates. This update is the rest of day 9 but the plan is for the update after this one to be days 10-14. Then the one after that to be days 15-21. And I think the average update moving forward will be around 1200 renders. So things start to get spread out more.
2. Hardest and most time consuming would be renders. But that's my favorite part of doing this so I don't mind that.
The most challenging for me is the end process of bringing everything together. The script, the images, the code, the animations. Just making everything mesh together in a satisfying and smooth way.
The hardest part about it is how sneakingly time consuming it can be. I'll look at what I have to do and think "Oh, this will only take like 3 hours." and then suddenly I'm 10 hours deep and not even close to finishing.
I admittingly can have a tough time "finishing" something. I always want to add a transition render somewhere or change the dialogue somewhere a bit.
So it's mostly just personal issues I need to work on and have been working on.
And for the second part of your question I really don't like asking for help. I'm not sure why but something about it feels really funky to me. So I've never really reached out for the community to help.
Another reason for it is I have awful team management skills. I've had plenty of "normal" jobs and I've been in management positions and I'm just not good at it. I always took a "I got it" approach, partly because of work ethic, and partly because I suck at delegating tasks to others.
So for many reasons, I don't plan on hiring anyone. I love everything about making WVM and don't really want to give up any of that process by hiring someone. And even if I did I don't think it'd work out as I'm awful at delegating work to someone.
3. Yes, and Ruby's new character model will be featured in the upcoming update.
It tires me just reading this.
Life's been crazy.
Also I like the number 2000 better than 1500.
