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Hey everybody.
This is going to be a long post but to start it all off I'm going to go ahead and deliver the news that the release is going to be pushed to this weekend.
I want to be totally clear and explain to you guys why that is. I don't want to bullshit and be vague. I want to let you guys know exactly what's been going on and how I've been handling things and why I need a few more days.
So it's no secret that these past few months haven't been great for me. PC issues into me getting sick into my aunt passing away. Through all of these things I've had a very headstrong attitude of keeping up my workflow, not out of a duty but out of a love I have for doing what I do. Which is why despite everything this release is going to be a good bit over 500 renders. (Which is longer than the entirety of day 1).
There were many setbacks along the way. Many scenes I had to redo things about because I wasn't happy with them. But we're there for renders, all of that work is done and I'm happy with it. I'm happy with the stopping point and everything that happens.
But that is only one piece of the pie. While I have everything WVM story boarded out I still write dialogue as I go. Which means in this week and a half I've had to do 4 weeks worth of something that still isn't easy for me to do right now. I can do it, but there are still moments where I can't. I still have to erase giant chunks of text and redo them because I didn't like it.
But it's going.
But once again, that's just another piece of the pie. There's still coding (though mine is very minimal, but still), editing 500+ images, compiling all the animations, bug testing, proofreading, renaming files, converting everything...
There's a lot of these smaller things that balloon into a lot of work. I'm a one man team still and all of these things become one huge time sink.
To make it more clear I want to talk about my dev process and my weeklies.
My usual schedule is to render everyday nonstop, no days off. Write dialogue in between renders Sun-Thurs. And all of the extra work is usually done on Wed-Thurs.
I'd say I actively work on WVM 11-15 hours a day every day of the week. And I indirectly work on it 24/7.
I'm not saying any of this to complain about the workload, the challenge is a huge reason why I love this so much. I'm saying it to explain that I fucked up and severely underestimated the time it would take me to finish.
I'm very hard on myself. But through this time I've tried to take things slow and not overdo it but I still pushed myself. That's just who I am.
And part of that is a constant voice in my head saying "You can do it, all you have to do is work nonstop and stay up for 40 hours, easy." Which has lead to many sleepless nights.
So yeah, I was trying to be very understanding of what I needed. I took this time to try and get my head right but as soon as I was starting to get there I started sprinting instead of easing into it. Which I fucked up on. It's lead to some lows for me.
On top of all of this where we're at in WVM is a really emotional time. Which was very hard for me to render and pose. I found myself jumping over the parts of scenes that were too much so. And at a certain point I couldn't progress anymore. Which has led me to add scenes into day 7 that were originally planned for later. (They make sense now as well, but due to day 7 already being bloated they were planned for later) Which has sadly bloated day 7 even further but I think it's okay. If it's too much I could always move them on the timeline since they're pretty bottled. (That being said a lot of progress is made still)
I sincerely apologize. Taking my time to get my head right is one thing, but promising everyone it would be out this Thursday was a boneheaded move by me.
You guys all told me to take the time I needed and I'm very appreciative of that and I'm very sorry for rushing myself back. Between that voice in my head and the pressure of delivering after all this time weighed heavily on me. But this fuck up is mine and mine alone.
If you've ever wanted to call me a ratfuck bastard man then now's the time to do it.
And if you're a patron and you're thinking about unpledging for now then I want you to know that I have no ill will toward you about it. I do not take a single dollar I receive for granted. I want to earn support and not be given it and I haven't been delivering recently. I hope to prove myself to be a consistent dev again soon.
I know my tier 1's outside of weekend renders have been neglected a bit recently. So in an effort to mitigate that fact slightly I've made the previous release (0.7.3) available for them.
Thank you for all of the support everyone. I'm sorry for the fuck up and I'll see you this weekend.
Love you guys <3