Progress Report

Alright folks. First thing first. As I mentioned in a post to some of the higher tier patrons already...I apparently wasn't actually over being sick. And I'm still not. I hate doctors with a passion, having had a lifetime of little but horrible experiences with them. So the fact that I finally gave in and went to the Doc yesterday so they could prescribe me something is...telling. Mostly about how miserable I've felt and the fact that it wasn't getting better. Unfortunately, because I've still been sick, I've basically been sleeping 12 hours a day for the last week or so, and that's kinda fucked up my ability to get stuff done. It's not all bad. As you should already be aware, I've already released everything but the game and the second short for the month. So I'll touch on where those two are.

Left Hand Magic

This has suffered from me being ill. Despite that, however, I'm nearly done with the renders. I've got two more animations to make, which I expect to be doing tonight and tomorrow. The real issue here is that I haven't even started on the programming. Programming, particularly the complex stuff needed for Left Hand Magic, isn't something I even want to think about with my head pounding and my brain feeling like it's oozing out of my skull. I've essentially been doing everything else, including post processing and such, in hopes that when I start feeling less like death warmed over, I'll be able to grind through the programming as fast as possible. 

This means I have made a couple of executive decisions though. One of them is that I've completely thrown out the idea of doing the overhaul to the core systems that are needed, at least during this build. There just isn't going to be time for it. Hell, I'm not sure there's going to be time for the minimum amount of programming, let alone anything extra. So I've trimmed that bit, which was essentially all about trying to resolve the issue of being able to skip content for any given route without it making no sense later. I want it to be possible to skip one or two scenes in a route without the whole thing making references to events that didn't happen. But, the way I thought of solving that is going to require a major overhaul to how I built the underlying structure. At this point, it may not even happen, since it will get worse the longer it goes unchanged. But, that's for future me to worry about. It wasn't a feature I truly consider critical anyway, as it's not something that most VNs even allow for. 

Anyway, long story short, I'm trying hard to make sure I'll be able to still release on time. But...I might be screwed on this one. I'm fucking pissed about that, given how hard I worked over the last few months to eliminate the delay period that we'd been dealing with. But there's literally nothing I can do about getting sick out of nowhere for a week. Worst case, I'll do my best to hold delays down to as minimal as I can manage, as I always do.

Short Story

This is...honestly the worse news. I'm simply flat out canceling a second short for the month. With as rotten as I still feel, and with as much still needs to be done with Left Hand Magic, I just can't justify the time. IF I manage to get done with LHM and release it on time, then I'll try to make this up to everyone next month with an extra short story. Haven's Port months are much more forgiving on me, so that should be possible, if I'm not dealing with a delay from LHM. If LHM does carry into next month...I'll probably have to just let the second short be a loss. I purely hate that, since it represents a failure on my part to deliver on my patreon rewards. Something I've never before failed at in all the years I've been running this patreon page. But there are limits to what it humanly possible :-(.