The Alpha, the Omega, and everything in between.

Hello.

As you all know, there were supposed to be two releases in 2024. It's May 2025, and there's still no release in sight. I was also in a cave for four months. This is officially the longest I've ever been silent online. What happened?

Simply put, I challenged myself; I was weak and I lost. No fancy way to frame it, so let's get that out of the way first. Took me a while to find the guts to show my face around here again amidst everything that's been going on. It's been two full years since the last update to the main storyline.

So, in the spirit of being objective, let's start with the basics and then expand upon that. We've got some catching up to do. I've acquired new tools, new responsibilities, and dropped a couple of deadweights along the way. Hopefully, by the end of this post, I'll have done a good job explaining what was, what is, and what will be.

In this post, I'll talk about:

Alpha: Small development update and next steps.

Omega: Back end of the "back end" of development; introduction to the aftermath of December 31st.

Everything in between: Personal circumstances; reasons for the delay; more on the aftermath of December 31st.

There's a lot to unpack here. Let's begin.

• The Alpha.
  
  I haven't had the opportunity to work on the game the way it deserves since December 31st. I was more invested in making sure I could before I did.
  
  Since I'm just now resuming work on the major -- more essential parts of the project, there's a limited amount of info I can share. I'm still getting the entire pipeline set up for the upcoming weeks.
  
  It helps me to keep a list:
  
  See Pastebin for a more readable version (most of it is in English): https://pastebin.com/PGejE9NV
  
  As you can see here, I use syntax highlighting to mark stuff as green or red depending on if it's done or not. There's a lot of red here, but really, most of the high-priority stuff is already "green" and out of mind. I've got things like "show the 'hide interface' hotkey in the starting tutorial", which is quick and simple, or stuff like "create a demo for the game" which I'm not even sure I'll ever do, and both of those are red. Then we have stuff like "redo fight sequence in Chapter 0" which is RIDICULOUSLY time-consuming, but already done. Basically, all of the red stuff needs to get done preferably before, or during 4.1 final.
  
  I also realize I made the gag video, but never showed you guys what the gallery will actually look like. Let me fix that.
  
  Took me forever, but... I landed on this. It's a basic design, but it's still designed, as opposed to just putting clickable letters/images on top of a blank background with no second thought. The best part? It works. No overcomplicated Python scripting/coding, no funky strings displaying stuff that hasn't been unlocked yet -- just a simple, nice-looking gallery. Still, there's room to improve, and improve on it I will. The logic is fully functional and ready to be used for the "Gallery" section and "Bonus Chapters" section, but there's still a minor amount of front-end work left; minor, but not unimportant. Quite the opposite, actually. Those final adjustments will really make my UI stand out.
  
  Also, going into the topic of my failure to deliver the game on the date I said I would not once, but twice, I will be offering a key for the Steam build of my game as a way to compensate everyone who's closely supported my work. Handing out red carpet passes to the amazing people who've been making sure this project gets to keep going was already on the to-do list, and I've wanted to expand that list since the first time I missed the date in November, but I wasn't sure Steam would have it. I've cleared it with them since then.
  
  Don't know if this is relevant, but I despise emotional bribery to the fullest extent. I despise the way people do it to justify a mistake or to get away with it, like "Oh, I did this good thing, so you can't be mad that I did bad thing earlier". I detest the lack of accountability and respect for other's feelings. I'm not a fan of justifying and accepting my own weaknesses and compensating for them. I'm a fan of learning, and if I was half the person I aspire to be, I would've learned the first time. It would've saved me and a lot of people the frustration.
  
  I wish to reassure everyone I'm not trying to pull that shit, but something has to be done, and this is all I can do right now while everything else is being worked on. I deeply value all of you, and I refuse to let "that game in development hell" be the last impression people have of my project, and "irresponsible" be the last impression people have of me. That said, I'm aware that my performance has been embarrassing, but I've dedicated years of my life to get here, and I want you all to be there to see this going in a good direction. If I'm lucky, I haven't yet dug myself too deep into a hole that I can't make that happen.
  

• The Omega.
  
  I think I remember telling you guys I went back to doing bike deliveries to pad my income before, right? Well, that's not looking very hot right now, at least not with the increase in my rent this year. My phone doesn't ring often enough with new deliveries, and I live in a very dangerous area. Can't really be biking around whenever and wherever I please delivering cupcakes through armed checkpoints. I might not be the smartest, but I'm smart enough not to risk my entire future for an average of $6 an hour, seeing as I could be doing better if I pulled my head out of my ass.
  
  Which I did.
  
  I needed something else to do (both for money, and to clear my head), so I did what I've wanted to do for years and started learning Blender to get myself out there in the 3d world. Like, actually learning -- not just messing around with it. I've managed to learn more in four months than I have in two years, which calls for celebration in better times, maybe. It's not much, but I even published my first model:
  
  https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/plain-white-armchair-2349295
  
  So far, I've made 40 cents off it... which is not nothing. It's literally the first model I've ever made, and at least I know there's potential there. The lack of details on the mesh could be excused if I knew how to set up/bake materials properly, which I don't. It's a matter of time, though. I'll learn and publish more stuff. I'm still pleased that after two and a half years of actively trying to learn Blender (and a decade of wanting to do it), I've finally done it.
  
  And off my bucket list it goes.
  
  This though, begs the question: Aside from the (currently nonexistent) cash inflow, how is this relevant to the project?
  
  Income aside, I need 3d modeling skills. The assets I use to make the images for the game are premade, which means that when I have an idea about a scene or character design, I have to find the closest match to it in a 3d prop catalog, or be forever satisfied with the next best thing, as I couldn't bring those ideas to life with my own two hands. Most of the time, my story and I are hostages to the available 3d catalog.
  
  Sometimes, an asset I need doesn't exist, or maybe it's exactly what I need, but I can't afford it. There were lots of times when I had to change how the story was told because I didn't have the necessary assets to bring my vision to life, or I didn't have the know-how to edit the assets I already had to fit my needs. 90% of my asset-related problems boil down to me not knowing how to make/edit them myself. That's not the case anymore. I can get basic stuff done now, but I still have a little more to go before I can commit to integrating "custom 3d modeling" into my process. However, once I feel like I understand the intricacies of architecture, I will start going down that path by making custom clothing.
  
  My current basic knowledge removes many issues I previously had with editing inside Daz Studio. I've become proficient enough to repurpose existing props, clothing, and characters, as I now understand how to edit a 3d mesh and edit UVs. Here's my second attempt at doing an armchair:
  
  
  
  Going further into 3d has also expanded my horizons in the sense that I am no longer limited to Daz3D's catalog and its adjacent platforms, like Renderosity or Renderotica. Sketchfab, Blendswap, CGTrader, and TurboSquid have a pretty good selection of free assets that I can adapt to my needs, which affords me the luxury of doing some scenes in ways I otherwise couldn't. See this:
  
  This is from one of my reworked scenes. I almost had to go with an entirely different scene idea (as I have many times before) because of something as trivial as not having a police badge prop. Even without modeling the police badge myself (which I can now do), the knowledge I gained from using Blender has broadened my horizons, indirectly leading me to one of the 3d stores, where I was able to find a badge prop and adapt it to my needs, making sure I got to do the scene exactly how I wanted.
  
  And hey, I don't know how excited people will be for this, but by combining all of my tools, I can now make geo-grafts. It's basically makeup for the mesh of 3d characters, which for one, means I can now make realistic avulsions, punctures, and lacerations, and generally just... put bloody holes through character models. I'm eager to prove myself in that department. One of the first scenes in Chapter 5 is heavily reliant on this kind of VFX.
  

• Everything in between.
  
  My mother was helping me with my bills, and since I'm no freeloader, I went to help her with her business, which evolved into a partnership. In the last four months, I've gone from assembling meal sets, to co-owning an online restaurant, to absolutely nothing. We made a little bit of money, but it didn't take. We couldn't see eye-to-eye on a lot of stuff, and so even though our product was great, everybody involved got burned out fast. On a side note, within all that chaos, I did find it amusing how close to being an off-brand version of "The Bear" we were. It was 1:1 to the show: the yelling, the messing up of orders, the pressure, the rush -- all of it was there. Check out one of our meal sets:
  
  Our clients absolutely loved our food... when we managed to get it to them on time.
  
  Even though it's probably for the best, it's still a shame I was forced to let it go. I was really committed to it, and failing some of our customers with no opportunity to make it right left a bad taste in my mouth. I also desperately needed the restaurant to work so I could build a foundation for myself to work on the game uninterrupted, and put down the fires that followed December 31st.
  
  I wasn't planning on spending a lot of time in the kitchen, so I splurged on food during the last weeks of 2024 and racked up quite some credit card debt on top of what I already owed (I had spent a lot of money on Vietnamese remote-rendering services). Fortunately, I was able to pay off all of that with the income from the game and the restaurant. There's at least one win in the middle of this if you dig deep enough.
  
  Everything this month has already been paid off, so I don't have to worry about food and bills, and I can just work on the game and plan out my next steps. I'm currently looking to downsize and move into a more affordable place, as I can no longer afford the one I currently live in (and I don't want to, anyway). My father's been helping me for the past couple of months, but I've relied on him far more than I'm comfortable with.
  
  I gotta find a new place to live, and I've gotta do it fast, seeing as my contract has already expired. That means I'll be dividing my attention between house-hunting and game development for the next few weeks, and then, full Steam ahead.
  
  There are still a couple of things to go over though before I can comfortably slip back into the state of mind necessary to see this through.
  
  I don't know how deep into this I got with you guys (if I ever did at all) but things have been declining for me after I got finished with the content update for Chapter 4.1 back in 2023. Chapter 4 was the turning point for the project in many ways. More noticeably, the fact that it took me one year and four months of continuous labor as opposed to the usual 3-4 months. After its release in 2022, I made some extra money that disappeared fast, as I had lots of overdue bills that I had neglected and QoL improvements to make in my work environment. It wasn't long before I was back to rationing food and doing odd jobs here and there to support myself. It was rough, but... after one year of work, I took that release as a win. I was just happy I got to finish it.
  
  I announced it pretty early on that the update that followed 4.0 was going to be an unlockable bonus chapter, instead of a full one. Of course, I was expecting some people to be annoyed it wasn't a full chapter update, as everyone has characters they like more, and characters they like less. I expected one out of two reactions: "Holy shit, an entire separate chapter dedicated to just this one tiny piece of the story? Cool! So, surely the other characters that I like more will get the same treatment, right?" Or maybe, just indifference, because again, everyone won't like every character.
  
  What I wasn't ready for, was for people to either not show up at all for that release, or be vocally upset that the main story wasn't being continued. Which is 100% fair, by the way, I just wasn't ready and got blindsided by it. Just like 4.0.0, I put everything I had into it, but this time, not only did I have zero return, but after putting in eight months of work, I felt like the entire project had taken ten steps back. Development has never been the same after that. I was never the same after that. Discipline is important, but motivation is kind of important too, and even though nothing has the power to change how I feel about my project, my motivation died out completely with the initial release of 4.1.
  
  The only three things keeping me going are the weight of knowing the rest of my life and career rely upon me making sure this game is successful; not failing the people who've enabled me to begin on this path in the first place, and also the fact that I'm just as passionate about writing the game today as I was back when I started, if not more. This material HAS to go somewhere.
  
  Game development is my highest calling, so make no mistake, I haven't questioned myself on my purpose on this Earth for five years and I'm not about to start now. Lately, though, I feel like I've been subconsciously settling into not being successful, if that makes sense. I know I'll see true growth once I release my game on Steam -- and that's a fact, but that thought isn't driving me at all. I've used up all the carrots and sticks I had to keep myself invested in the nitty-gritty part of making the game. I feel myself getting comfortable with failure because I haven't really seen... not failure yet, and that's harming literally every single aspect of my life, seeing as I spend almost every waking moment thinking about my game.
  
  It's easy to blame the delays on lack of funding, lack of time, lack of development cohesion, but this has been brewing for a long time. The blame isn't anywhere else but here, because I haven't been dealing with this. Making a game is a slow, and challenging endeavor, but it's not this hard. Most of the issues behind development are more psychological than practical. I've mastered all of my essential tools, and I've learned how to make the most out of my hardware. Release times should be getting quicker, not slower.
  
  There's a good reason I'm sharing this, and it's not to be whiny about it. I just feel like I need to address this in order to move on from it. It's been over a year, and I can't keep letting it weigh me down.
  
  And when we talk about why I disappeared these last few months, anyone close to me could've predicted this. I dedicated my entire 2024 to finishing those releases and putting my game on Steam, and my every move was entirely, and exclusively to further that purpose. I monitored my sleeping schedule. I tried to sleep more, or sleep less to see what worked best. I still monitor what I eat, and how much, to make sure I have a healthy body, therefore a healthy mind, therefore a fruitful work routine. I started out on psychotherapy to further that purpose, and for 365 days, I thought about nothing else. And now, I've nothing to show for it. I didn't take that well. It's why I jumped on the opportunity to co-run a business and rebuild myself.
  
  A lot of the reworked scenes are already done, but a lot of the old stuff was removed in favor of the new stuff, so even if I wanted to release the game half-baked, a lot of it wasn't even baked yet. Let's not even get into how I spent days looking for inspiration and pushing myself to physical sickness while working on scenes that I didn't even need that much to make the release. So much for tight planning, huh?
  
  Once I realized I was fumbling the entire process, I was merely hours away from release. And even then, I promised you guys a release date; partly because I was high as shit from being "in the zone", partly because I'm an asshole, but mostly, I did it because I didn't want to "try" to make two releases in a year; I've done that before. This time, I wanted to do it. I promised it because I believed in it myself with zero room for doubt. I was more trying to sell that to myself than anyone else, really. Of course, I can't really be psyching myself up using your trust as collateral.
  
  So for that, and for all else above, I deeply apologize.
  
  It's impossible to know the kind of mistakes you'll make tomorrow, so I can't promise with an honest heart that something like this won't ever happen again, but I can promise that this mistake has hurt me, and it has shamed me as both man and artist. You all deserved better; you are owed better -- and it is my single highest priority in life to reach a standard that honors not only you, but myself. I never want to go through this again, so I'll do the only thing anyone can really do, and I'll learn from it.
  
  There have been other circumstances, more personal ones that I don't find appropriate to share here in great detail, but to summarize, as it is also relevant to development, my entire family has been split in half, and it's the main reason I'll have to move from where I currently live. Despite that, I can say that things have been going well with development, and I'll rejoin the fray with a clear head.
  
  I just needed a little push to remind me of what's important, and I needed to stop brute-forcing my way back into work the way I've been doing in the past four months, without first making some changes and getting rid of everything that's been dragging me down, seeing as "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting your results to be different".
  
  A little update on my medical stuff, by the way. I finished with the initial examination, but I still have to take the results back to my psychiatrist to find out if I really have some deep bullshit going on with my brain, or if I'm just a huge pussy. Right now, I don't think I'll be satisfied with either answer. On one hand, I have to accept that I have a medical condition and some stuff is outside of my control, which is a mentality that I absolutely do not want to settle in. So then, nothing is my fault? It's okay to be bitch-made for the rest of my life? That's a dangerous place to be in, psychologically. On the other hand, there's a chance I've been messing up my entire life for no reason at all, which is just as scary as the first option. Exam results show symptoms of ADHD and Generalized Anxiety Disorder, but I'll only know for sure after I go back to my doctor. I'll keep you guys posted.
  
  As for the release, it is impossible for me to shadow-drop this thing, as I only get the benefit of a Steam release once, but I'll be sure to ONLY set a release date once the game is 100% ready to go. I'll get as much as possible done before I have to go look at houses, and I'll see you all soon.