Current Development Plans + Post-0.2 Debrief

So, now that v0.2 has been fully released and finished (save for a few more bugs that I have yet to address), it's time to talk about what the current plan for development is, as well as why this update in particular took so long.

First of all, in regards to Fataclysm, I'm not fully set on what direction I want to take things right now. There are a few different things I have planned in regards to layer 3 and other future party members, but I'm currently thinking that a smaller update is in order before I tackle something large like either of those.

Outside of that, I'm also planning on releasing an update for Wasteline. It's important to me that I implement the true ending for that game, so I intend to do that some time in the near future. I'll probably be doing a poll on how much people want to see invested into that kind of thing before I start, however.

Finally, I've also began production on a new project. I can't really give many details on it right now, but I just want you all to be aware that some exciting stuff is in the works!

Now, one thing that I also wanted to address is why 0.2 took so long to make. I don't really want this to seem like a list of excuses, more like where things went wrong and how I've addressed them so that they don't continue to happen.

The most obvious of the reasons is that I was recently in my final semester of university, but I'm entirely done now, so I won't have to dedicate any more time to schooling in the future. Following that, the inclusion of Leona into the game wasn't particularly well planned, which wasted alot of time and forced me to rewrite quite a bit. However, now that I've learned from those mistakes and have a proper framework for adding in party members, future additions to the roster shouldn't take nearly as much time.

However, the biggest issues that I had while developing 0.2 were definitely in regard to mental health stuff. I was fairly burnt out from the work on Fataclysm (and Wasteline) that I had already done before that, but the bigger problem that I was having stemmed from ADHD. I hadn't really struggled with it too much in the past, but during my work on 0.2, it became especially debilitating when it came to actually sitting down and getting things done. I really enjoy working on game development and it's genuinely a super important part of my life, but for a while my brain simply didn't cooperate when it came to working on that kind of thing.

Thankfully, several months ago I decided to pay a visit to a psychiatrist (not that it was cheap, thanks American healthcare), and I ended up getting some medication that really helped. So, suffice to say it made the rest of the work on the update much easier. Going forward, future projects should also be released much more smoothly, instead of the super long wait that there was for v0.2. Once again, I wanted to apologize that you all were waiting for so long, but I'm glad to say that it hopefully shouldn't happen again.

And that's all for now! Let me know if you all have any thoughts on where development should go in the future, and I'll be posting a poll in that regard relatively soon.