Development Update #37

Hello everyone. Today I'm here to talk more about the development of the game.

As a developer, I should only work on the engine, but I also work alone in this game, with the sole exception being WagnerMutt as the current artist for the project.  So, from the code to the story I write everything, and I also give the artist free will to draw the scenarios without my input, it's for the best not clogging his mind with details of the place since it would never look like I described, trust on the person who's making your art is important, so I only give him general ideas and directions. That also means that sometimes I have to rewrite some parts of the game to fit with the backgrounds he makes. 

I decided instead of writing the new character to continue writing the forth day for Karnal and Wagner, the reason for that is that I need the artist to focus on the backgrounds, I want to release the first public demo of the game since the opening of this patreon (the current "free" demo there is the project at it's earlier stages), and I want to do so without those images that aren't mine to use. 

The artist is taking his time to make the backgrounds between his work and life so we need to wait for that. 

I love writing, but it's not easy. We need a calm environment to write stuff, and I'm the one who does almost all the house labor here, for now, this means every time I'm on the zone writing like crazy some good stuff, someone just shows up (because everyone's work is more important than yours so as long as you don't disrupt their work, they don't care if your concentration is flushed down the toilet for their needs) and when I come back to work, well let's just say the text is not as good as before.

There's no thing such as inspiration, just hard work right? But inspiration and concentration are two different things. Inspiration is something you catch when you're in the most absolute state of peace with yourself, sometimes you can achieve that by concentrating, sometimes not. However, it's impossible to write a good essay for anything if you're not concentrated. Try to make anything super important for work or college in a hurry or without feeling good to do so, while you're super sleepy or super tired: The chances are that  90% of what you did is trash.

It's rare for me to feel inspired when writing, but if I'm concentred enough I can make a good story trying to create a world around what I'm writing and trying to make stuff to make sense.

That's why sometimes the player and Wagner discuss politics of their world or Karnal and the player just talk about races and species. 

I don't want to make something vast and complicated but I like the idea that diversity will always be a problem as long as we are individuals, no matter if you're a human or a beast dog. In the end, if we can think for ourselves and be civilized, we will always struggle with anything that doesn't include ourselves. 

And that's why I need concentration. Too much noise (apart for my music), too much stops because someone (my roommate) needs my utmost attention because of reasons, and so on and so on. Those things that can just break the concentration makes any storytelling a hassle. I don't have any person who can read what I'm writing and tell me if it's good or not apart from you guys, and I'm glad there are even some patrons who come directly to me and say the story is amazing and they're curious about how it will end. This means that I'm on the right track somehow. 

English, after all, is not my native language. I'm only speaking English, writing stuff in English for five years now. So it's easier for me to just misplace some words in lots of places, and I'm sorry if you encountered too many cases of this. However: Remember the game has a tool for you to send me the correct phrasing for that, so use it and I'll fix it and put your name in the credits of the game as a special revision team member! 

That being said, the 4th day is coming, little by little. The main route of that day is bigger than the others because there's the aftermath of the 3rd-day end-route. And I'm in the process of reading what I wrote to see if it's good enough because I was interrupted five times while writing it and I have the feeling that maybe I'll have to redo it.

So that's it for the story part of the game, what about the coding?

I added some new cool stuff to the game. They are small things but I think they add depth to the gameplay. One of them is the new Gallery of music. 

The music Gallery was the first part of the gallery I did, and at the time I didn't know how to make somethings properly so that the gallery in itself was a mess. I saw a cool concept for the music gallery where a disc was spinning and I wanted to create something similar, and now the music gallery has more depth and personality than before! 

The other change I did, and that took way more time than I wanted because I had to mess with code I thought I would never have to touch again, the text code, was that now whenever you see a comma or a period, the text will "pause" for some seconds.

This is created for you to have some sense of timing within the player's thoughts and stuff like that. Whenever there are three commas in sequence, it means he's thinking. And that takes a little time. So this kind of pause now exists in the game!

I created a new title screen with more stuff and it has better information than before, with direct links to my Twitter and the artist too! 

I also added tons of bug fixes, because every time I check the game I find some bugs that even you guys don't, and I'm glad I do!  I don't want this game to be broken after all.

So, for now, those are the things I did for the game, I'm hoping that by releasing the public version of the game with two days of content, a gallery and stuff like that, the game looks more finished and good than the current public version there and that can somehow attract more people to my game. I'm desperately needing more patrons, not only because I need money, everyone does, but because it's simply impossible for me to invest in anything for this game.

Every single art you see in the game was created by Wagner (the drawings) and me (the UI), nothing there is paid for anyone to do. The music if free for use and sometimes the creators just change the licenses and I need to check for that periodically, the UI is good, I'm confident in my skills of making it by myself, I like designing stuff, but I would love to pay for more music and even art for the game. The deal I have with Wagner is for him to make the backgrounds and the sprites for the characters of the game, so any sex scenes or bonding scenes I will need to pay someone else (at least I want to do that instead of overloading Wagner with more stuff for him to do, I want to release this game eventually!). Those things cost money and I need to pay taxes if I'm going to buy it from people over the US since PayPal kinda 'blocked' every single way for me to just send my personal money in the account to other people without using a freaking credit card and that's expensive and takes more time and tries than usually. Anyway, for me to actually hasten this project I need money, especially because I want to release it with proper music made for the game, animations and more stuff, I don't know if I'll be able to do it with my current situation, so let us hope this new demo when released, can be a good attractive to the, what? 500 people who're currently watching my Patreon (following it) without being patrons themselves. 

With all of that being said, I have some gifs and stuff I will be using on the next alpha release to show what I'm doing, but you can catch glimpses of what I did on my twitter!

For now, I hope you're all enjoying the game as it is, and yes: I know it's quite boring having to wait, but story writing is something that takes time and good effort before it's properly done and it will take even more time for me to write those next days and stories, so your support is the only thing that is able to make me continue working on this game nonstop. I need more yes, but the more I need is to, virtually pay for more stuff on the game and for me to survive too, haha!

Thank you so much for your support, and don't forget to share this Patreon's link with other people and friends you think could be interested in helping this project too!

Thank you all guys.