Patreon Monthly Update: November 2015

Greetings, my Patrons! My default emotion for these is usually one of apology, so it legitimately caught me off guard that I actually had a fairly eventful October! Seven new videos went up on the channel, which is significantly higher than my output has been all year!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBjPEqdagcfbhwwmFLRyxgiyHVNGv5v4S

Normally I would've done the whole "Thank all my Patrons" voiced thing at the end of each episode, but since I recorded all seven episodes on September 25th, I didn't know if anyone new would be signing up and I didn't want videos going up on October 31st naming an outdated list of supporters. There are ways around that, of course, but for now this is fine.

Other things that happened this month: I spent my entire new computer fund savings on a new motherboard and a new processor. While I was house-sitting for my cousin in October, Newegg had a sale, so I pounced on it. It was $385, but I feel like it was well-spent. The processor took up the bulk of that, but I'd figured $200 and it ended up costing me $240, so that's more or less what I'd budgeted. If the mail-in rebate for the Motherboard ends up going through, that'll be $20 back in my pocket, too.

We are now two very big steps closer to accomplishing the goal that this Patreon was set up to do. I just need to buy some RAM and probably a newer, bigger case to put all this stuff in. The dream of having this all put together by Christmas is looking more and more like a reality.

I also, uh, started a new game project this month! While I was at my cousin's, I happened to watch a Let's Play of Hugo's House or Horrors, and inspiration struck. Hugo was an old SCUMM Adventure game by LucasArts, and was made entirely by one person. I figured if I kept my graphics simple like Hugo, I could have something done by Halloween. As it turns out: Nope! But that's also in part because as you can tell by the above animated GIF, the original dream of my adventure game using VGA/CGA graphics went right out the window, with the final result being a little bit more Sam & Max/Day of the Tentacle.

I was right, though: as you can tell by the above GIF, making an Adventure Game is actually pretty simple. The "engine" that powers my game is basically done at this point; all I need to do now is write a bunch of dialog and draw a bunch of artwork for characters and backgrounds. I have the entire game written out, I just have to fill in the blanks with actual assets, now.

The plan was to put the game up on Itch.io with a "Pay What You Want" price, letting people get the game for free if they want to, but to strongly suggest a minimum of $1. If I'd get enough money to cover the Steam Greenlight submission fee, I'd consider an updated/enhanced/expanded version of the game for Steam (assuming I got approved). Of course, I could also set the minimum at a dollar and force people to pay for it, too. I suppose price all depends on how I feel once I'm closer to done.

And of course, I'll post it here on Patreon.

Once I do truly hit "feature complete" as per my design document, I'll probably release something very simple just to gauge and see how it "feels." If there's any Adventure Game-isms I'm missing.

As for videos on the channel, I'll have at least 2-4 more episodes of MarioWeen to get through; there's the Christmas levels that need to be recorded, and I'd planned on digging up the various versions of my attempts at remaking MarioWeen over the years and doing a whole video on those.

As for the other videos I promised... they'll come. Eventually. Stay tuned.

Until then...