Development News

Aloha, everyone!

I've got two things to talk to you about today.

#1:
The next update (v0.7) will be delayed by a week.

Hold on!
Let me explain before you start weeping:

TL;DR: I want to polish some older scenes and maybe retroactively add some animations to the game to spruce it up.

The actual explanation:
It's been a while since I started developing Crimson High and I've learned a lot since then. Some of you might have already noticed this, but I started overhauling some of the earlier scenes in the game (MC's introduction scene for example) and have added better-looking locations and used more refined expressions/postures.
I want to start adding more animations to earlier parts of the game too, since I'm getting more and more comfortable with those. This is secondary, tho.

Now, the preparations for 0.7 have brought me to a point where I deem it necessary to overhaul at least some more of the older stuff, so it fits better with what's going to happen.
This is purely about visuals, tho. No new hints or lore or whatever will be added. I'll just change some environments, since I now know better ways to do things.
There is a scene in MC's bedroom ahead, which I'd like to have in a new location. Since it wouldn't make sense to use the old location for now and then overhaul it later, I might as well go ahead and do it now.

I'll let you know on here and on Discord how things are going. 

Now, what else could I possibly want to talk about?

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#2:
After 0.7 I will drop the fixed schedule.

Again, hold on!
The explanation is coming.

TL;DR:
You can't rush perfection and perfection is what I'm aiming for.

What does that mean?!
That, my friend, means that I've had to cut corners before to make the deadline. It's worked out so far (mostly), but I don't like it at all. I've said it multiple times before: Crimson High is very much a passion project for me and I want to go back to being passionate about it - not efficient. Being creative is not a thing that can be either forced or rushed.
You love Crimson High and its girls as well - you wouldn't be here if that wasn't the case - so I assume that you want it to be the best version it can be.

I've started this project without knowing much about being a developer. Like, basically nothing. I had no idea about coding, post-processing of images, music license-y stuff, nor what would and wouldn't be expected of me by the people who love what I create.
I figured that I had to go by a fixed schedule since I had seen it done by some of the bigger, long-established guys/gals. After almost half a year (damn, time flies when you're having fun, doesn't it?) of working on CH, I can now say that their way isn't mine, tho. Stressing about meeting a (self-imposed) deadline and getting an (again, self-imposed) similarly-sized update out every two weeks is very much detrimental to my mental health and the game's quality.
I've told you last year that we'd try out the bi-weekly schedule for a while to see if it works and this is my conclusion: It doesn't.
Now, that doesn't mean that the game will have months-long pauses between updates all of the sudden. I still want to aim for roughly the same time frame. I just don't want to feel bad or the need to work until 1 a.m. because I've learned something new (like camera flights/animations) that would be awesome to have in the game without the time to properly learn how to do it. All in all those changes should improve the game's quality by a lot without having too much of an effect on the update quantity.

Anywhooo, that's it from me for now.
Let me know about your thoughts in the comments below (always wanted to say this) and thanks for being awesome!

Cheers!