Fortnightly Progress, Review of 2019, and looking ahead to 2020

Doing something a bit different with this Fortnightly Progress. Mainly as last thursday when the Fortnightly would normally come out I'd have been trying to write this on a tablet. Then for the next couple of days as an unfortunate consquence of spending time on trains and coaches I was the kind of ill where the lyric 'I'm not sick, but I'm not well...' was repeating through my head constantly in a tortuous loop. After that it was finishing off the hotfix, and now here we are.

I will be mainly focusing on what I think went well in 2019. Doing it otherwise I can't imagine that even the players into the more S&M elements of the game wants to read that much self flagellation so stick that all under the big heading of Must Do Better and move on to the positive.

The best part to me by far was The Twine Conversion that started in June.

This I'd wanted to start for far too long, but was struggling with how to split the focus with not disrupting getting consistent RAGS updates out. Thanks to a generous patron the Wednesday streams did a lot to help that. Ended up disrupting quite a bit anyway due to the initial excitement of how well things were going to my surprise. 

I'm absolutely staggered by how much I've got done. Let's put it this way this amount of time in I'd barely done the intro part of Whorelock's and had given up due to it being a miserable slog. After coming back to it there was well over another year of frequently having to go line by line to get it the first regions playable. 

I'd argue that the conversion for No Haven is significantly further ahead than where Whorelock's is right now. Obviously that's highly subjective as you can actually play WR and not the twine conversion of NH yet which means you kind of have to take my word on that. Still, doing things all at once means that all the art, all the text, all the commands, and all the conditions have been converted in NH and in WR I'd say about half of those are still to do. I honnestly thought just doing all the art alone would take months by itself so to be at this point is to me bloody phenonemal. 

Definitely been a learning experience again. Conditions especially I only really 'solved' how to do in December which is going to cause some issues as I will likely need to go back and sort out some issues the old less good methods I was using will have caused. Yes, that countdown I've been doing in the fortnightly's thanks to that ten hour stream I did last month is officially now down from 685 to 0.

It's also been a good year for Commissions.

Thanks to the patreon doing well I was confidant enough to get far more bonus commissions outside of the regular polls. Let's put it this way I've currently got 61 pieces in the Pixiv gallery, and over half in 32 of them are from last year. That's also thanks to some that were funded by patrons while arranged by me which were interesting challenges.  We also managed to hit the $1,750 tier for the first time allowing some really big commissions in terms of characters like the Cheerleaders, and the upcoming Encampment and To Hunt a Paladin which won last months poll in a very close run thing. 

I also think in my opinion that we've had some of the best in terms of quality. Felox's Black Orc, Kate's Wrapped in Webs, and Opalescent's High Elf especially being some of my absolute favourites period. Another favourite that got done was the Lesser Succubus for the Discord Assignment which is on list of outstanding stuff to do that needs to get done ASAP.

I'm also very happy that NH Trolls got a proper look at last as I've never liked the overly tusky dysmorphic genders design that's otherwise so prevalent. NH Harpies also got nailed down to a consistent design and Asanei got made a bit more distinct from their inspiration. Several other races got their first appearance and I'm sure more will get their spot this year. 

While it could have gone a lot better I am reasonably okay with what got done for No Haven.

Biomancy, Hypnosis, and Dominating all got significant improvements to get them closer to where Corruption is. Bimbo training made it in adding a much needed extra path to make training more interesting. There was a bunch of new assignments including Sable Masquerade which to me was a real highlight in terms of the how well that one came together in terms of both concept and writing. 

The number of aspects in the game doubled and many were significantly more complex and entertaining then the initial ones when they were first introduced.

We also had the introduction of the arguably way too mad Favoured/Unfavoured system which did a lot to flesh out many of the races in the game, gave inspiration to expand lore, and will be used as a basis for future content such as race animosities.  I've got another collumn on the spreadsheet ready to go to take account of future races and other additions so this still has room for expansion.

That's not to mention a lot of other improvements such as new uniques including some of the most complex so far in terms of mechanics, encampment takeovers, forced nightly encounters, Magic/Elementalism for you, and so on.

Just the one HMV last year in Ass ⬆. The commissioner liked it so call that a win, and that someone like my HMVs enough to pay me to do one in the first place.

Looking ahead to this year of 2020 I'd like to get the following done as minimum:

• First and most importantly is twelve updates once a month for No Haven. Now this may slip due in the switch over to Twine, but that's the goal. Have to try to do be less scattershot so I can knock a update on the head and say it's done along with stop getting overly into time consuming complex passion additions like the Fav/Unf mechanics. 
• Get the Twine conversion to be playable. If possible switch over development entirely and rid myself of RAGS entirely. 
• New races added to NH all done via Commissions. It's the year of the Rat so the Veil should at last get to make it in to the game after being teased for so long. Main thing holding that back is I really want that commision to be a big quality one so that's going to be pricey. Ideally that will be showing up as a poll option sometime by mid this year. There's also some races that have come out of fantastic discussions on the Discord like Gorgons, the otter themed beastkin in the Taggerfolk, and Sphynxes which are all races who maybe can be added with lower level commissions than I want to do for the Veil, and other more major outstanding races like Mermaids, and the eventual addition of the incredibly powerful one member present in the ecampment only Advanced Races.
• Finish the Biomancy storyline. There's a lot to be added as I've just got the commission for the second part done, but I realise due to starting it when I did it's starting to drag which is not ideal. 
• Keep NH additions manageable so holding off on bigger additions like Enchanting and the other outstanding Crafting mechanics to ensure the Twine transition goes smoothly.  I also don't want to get stuck again in catch up limbo which was pretty demoralizing and led to many of the issues in 2019.
• At least one new HMV. This is obviously more of a sidegig, hence leaving it to nice, but it'd be nice to squeeze one in. Got one planned out that shouldn't take all that long so you should see that one in the next few months hopefully if NH work permits. 
• Solve the UI issue that crippled the progress of the Secret Project and get out a playable demo to guage interest. Again like the HMVs this is more in the 'would be nice, but not essential collumn'. Still I think it has real potential. Has had a substantial amount of the mechanics worked out ready to go. and would nicely feel out a niche in the setting that's not filled by with WR or NH. I've just got to work out a way to represent those mechanics in a way that works and so far it's been beyond my current understanding and abilities. Optimistically getting the NH twine conversion out should help with that. 
• Speaking of WR I would like to return to it this year. Due to reception and with everything else I have on this really ain't a focus, but it annoys me to leave it in its current state so ideally would at least like to get it up to par in terms of content with the RAGS version.  

Think that covers everything. Of course if you have any questions or suggestions then please let me know. 

Other than that for the regular Fortnightly stuff.

Hotfix came out so will give that a day or so then if nothing major comes up that'll be used for a major release.

You know how I said I was leaving the Dark Elf for January? Well same day I got an email from a returning artist who I leapt at the chance to use again. Seen the colours of the naked version already so this should be out maybe even by the next one of this in under a fortnight. 

In regard to Picarto in the spirit of new year, screw catchup, I'm just going to start over back to regular schedule. So Twine conversion streams wednesdays, and then usually regular streams on friday to mondays with the odd day moved as needed. 

Sad I couldn't do the usual New Year's Eve stream. Alas mainly due to being incredibly sick post hols along with the outstanding hotfix put paid to that. Accentuating the positive at least not doing it meant it didn't knock me out for a couple of days while leaving the stream up constantly for over 48 hours hey :D 

As always I hope that was worth the read, and thanks again for your support!