_Artemis DevLog 10/17

Good morning everyone!

First and foremost, I hadn't had a chance to properly thank everyone for hitting the 1,000 Patron goal. I had my head down focusing on the update, I just really wanted to express my thanks. A major career change such as this is just one of the things we hesitate with when considering it. And I've thought about just career changing in general in the past and it's always brought me pause. But developing Artemis has shown me this is where my passion is at. The kind of stress I feel working on Artemis is much different than the stress I feel working at my old job. When you're done creating something for people to enjoy. It feels good to sit back and it's a different feeling seeing how much work was put into something and it's all packaged up and ready to go. So thanks, everyone. I greatly appreciate all the support and encouragement received from everyone.

I also apologize for pulling the game after launching it. While that issue wasn't a bug, I still absolutely had to pull it because, for those who have finished the game know what happens once the credits conclude. And I had to make a snap decision to not ruin the experience by being spoiled before you even got to play the update, regardless if it was user error or not. If it were Chapters 1, 2 or 3 which didn't have any spoilers post credits, I would have posted a workaround instead. So I do apologize for having to do that. That said, I'm very happy with how many bugs were cleaned up by the extended beta test time. I generally gave my testers only a week and with how things are starting to branch out, I wanted to give my testers and myself more time to comb through playthroughs and catch things. I work on things that are still being worked on for a day or two while the reports are collected and address them, then deploy a patch. Rinse repeat. It was less stressful for everyone and we were able to catch a lot more bugs in this chapter. Especially in the Halloween scene. Many different interactions and cues to go through and ensure they work properly. 

I've been waiting for major bug reports and fortunately, nothing has been reported just yet, so it was mostly a nice post-release weekend. There was an odd issue with Mac builds, but has since been resolved. Essentially if you had an Intel or M1 chip Mac, the game spat out an error. If you have the M2, worked normally. But the current Mac links have the fix, so safe to use that link if you're on Mac. Other than that, has been a nice post-release weekend.

I won't say much about the release just yet until the 31st, after the TI-86 tier has gotten a chance to play the chapter. Only that Chapter 4 concludes Book One and Chapter 5 will be the start of Book Two. Don't worry, I plan on taking it easy these next two weeks, before CH5 development starts. Also, I'll be planning things for the Steam launch as well. I hope to have Book One on Steam in December. There's a 30 day wait period before it's available. So, hoping December would be a great timeframe to release it. I will let you guys know when Artemis store page is available.

This week's render count...just kidding. Just felt weird not reporting numbers. Again, thank you all for your patience with this release. There were a lot of development hurdles in this chapter and the Halloween party put me in a bad spot. Mainly because things were going great and suddenly things got complicated as I reached this scene. So I could imagine how that would look from an outside perspective. But this scene did teach me a lot as I do plan on having large scenes again. So happy to learn from the experience.

Again, thank you all and I hope you enjoyed this update. This Friday I'll update the update post for T-800 users. And the following Friday TI-86 will have access.

Have yourselves a fantastic week!

digi.B