2020: The Year of Challenges

Greetings,

I am making a public post about the fact that development of Episode 9 is still ongoing but I have not exactly been posting about it much for the public to see, though I think many of you realize that this year is a challenge for many of us.  Things have been crazy, between the pandemic, the social unrest, the new normal that is shopping in the midst of all this, the hunt for toilet paper due to a panicked populace.

Episode 9 was always going to be a large episode, it's a double episode like Episode 8 was (we have Hegemony and Aloshan storylines again) and while it doesn't have the quantity of sex scenes that Episode 8 did, it has a greater diversity in what the sex scenes are, all having their own environments and setups (only two take place in crew quarters) and the sex scenes are a bit longer than average as well. Also, like Episodes 3 and 6, there's a lot of crew interaction scenes here.  In fact there's the most crew interaction scenes I've ever done in a single episode.

Of course such a long episode was going to take a long time to make (in fact I was still doing a rewrite last week, adding in a scene, as Patrons are aware of).  This year though, has been challenging personally as well for me.  I've had to play personnel chauffeur for my wife, who is essential, and had to go in to work in her office, and public transportation was not going to be possible because she is also pregnant with our first child.  That child is literally due any day now.  Both the pandemic, the fact that I lost some patrons due to their own struggles with the pandemic, and the fact I have a kid that's nearly here, meant I had to pick up a side job.

This is a year of challenges, and I am working as fast as I can on Episode 9, but I am just a solo dev and I am no machine.  I suffered some burn out in March from pushing too hard, and have been trying to avoid doing a crunch if only for my own mental health.  I am still working on this all, I have not abandoned it in the least (Jamie and I are even talking Season 2 plots and threads).  It is just a challenging time.

I'm still hoping and planning for the first Alpha to be soon.  How soon is up to many factors, and things can always change, but I am working on it.  There is light at the end of the tunnel.

Stay safe, stay healthy, I'll have more soon.
DrMadDoc47