Proof of Life #15: About my work

 (Another long post ahead, prepare yourself!)

Hello guys and gals, N_Taii here!

First of all, sorry for spamming you with Patreon posts recently. If everything goes well, I should make another one on the 5th and then leave you guys alone^^

Onto the main segment now: I've counted down the votes according to everyone's tier and the results are in: it's extremely tied, but doggystyle wins with 52 votes against 51 for missionary , so next animation will be Celestine doggystyle !

Now, I wanted to make this post a bit special by writing about what I do when developing my games, so you guys know I don't just laze around waiting for money to fall into my pockets. It concerns everyone palying the game, so I made the post public : )

So the main part is obviously development, making sure that everything falls into place as intended, that the mini-games (more or less) work, that everything flows smoothly and that it doesn't "look weird" or completely unnatural. Also, I make the maps, but there aren't too much of them so it doesn't take up too much time.

Second is the writing. English isn't my native language, and while I don't think my English is bad, it is a lot harder to give "soul" to the characters, and a personality that is their own and that is attractive enough. For that, I do a lot of research to find fitting expressions and make sure the words used are actually in English, and not some weird mix out of my imagination. I also make sure to re-read everything I wrote several times so it doesn't sound to cringy and "machine-like", but really like something anyone would say.

Another part is interacting with the community, all of you guys. Answering your questions and inquiries, trying to solve bugs and issues, discussing the feedback I receive. It also means making posts, setting up polls, checking other forums, making sure each version contains the accurate amount of content, and so on and so forth (this whole part is what I consider to be the "fun part", I love interacting with you guys and getting your ideas/feedback : ) ).

I also am responsible for a lot of the sounds in-game. I find them, mix them when necessary and make sure they fit the scene and aren't annoying or out of place. The way RPG vx ace (the engine I use) is made, it is sometimes complicated to have several soundtracks at the same time, so I have to find workarounds for that.

The things that takes the most time is sprite making/sprite modification. Even though I take a lot of sprites from an already existing database, I try to have something different so you don't always see the same thing. I'm still very much a beginner, and a clumys one at that. I can sometimes start to make a sprite only to realize I completely messed up and have to give up 2-3 hours of work and start again. For those that have seen the GaryxCelestine BDSM scene of update 2, this whole scene took me a whopping 6 hours to make, no lies^^. This is why I'm definitely going to hire a pixel artist to make the sprites for my next game.

Last but not least, debugging. I watch each scene several times, I try to play every path and every option I can think of several times to make sure there are no bugs (there will always be bugs at the end of the day, but I'm trying to avoid having anything game-breaking).

There are other miscellanous things I do, but what I listed above is the main part.

Please, don't misunderstand, I'm not trying to whine or complain. I'm happy to do what I do and I consider myself extremely lucky to have people supporting me. I just wanted to be completely honest and transparent with you guys. Some people have expressed doubts about the amount of work I'm doing, and they probably have their reasons for that, but I don't think I'm a lazy dev, probably just a slow one^^. I'll let you make your own opinion on that.

Thank you everyone for reading, have a great week !

N_Taii