seventhvixen
A positive take on it.
Published: September 6th 2021, 6:54:17 pm
My 63rd post tagged as devlog, who could imagine.
TL;DR: Lots of thanks!
I did not expected such positive responses (And so fast) from you and so many messages of love and support. I am very grateful. You're the best players a dev can hope!
Next day I paused the patreon I immediately start to feel lighter. A big burden was off from me. I took a bit of a real full vacation week for the first time, while just rendering a bit, but by this weekend I was chewing on my teeth, work needs to be done, quick or slow.
I was tempted to buy some millionare budged buggy triple A game to laugh at it like but those guys don't even know it should be on permanent sale right now... (I'm looking at you, Cyberpunk x'D)
1. I wanted to make a disclaimer on the previous post.
Obviously it had a hard and cold tone. Too many times the word "pain" was used; although everything it says is true, it was necesary to explain it like that.
I just want to emphasize that Patreon has also given me many good things that I am grateful for.
A lot! Mostly just via being my main way to connect with the players, having a lot more reach for interaction that other plataforms that just don't work that well (Like itchio, gamejolt, etc).
Above all, to make this community that I want to keep growing. Billing or not billing, I want you to help me to make games, testing, playing, talking about them...
I guess after I release the full 0.20 and if I see next update will not take that much extra I'll unpause it. (Could be next month? Who knows, not me... But I usually only release a update if I'm sure of it, and If I'm sure about a release I'll be sure about unpausing patreon...) I can always pause it anytime in the future that I feel I cannot perform on a way I feel optimal, and it should not be traumatic... Just better for my mental health than the way I tried to crush myself these past two years.
2. Now a bit of real devlog about general deving:
Many times I talked about the crunching month. After some years working this way I understand now how it is so damaging. But the only way to code a release in one-two months is crunch. Not to crunch is to need 3-4 months to code every update, and that's a lot of time. The Only way I was making so big and complex game these years was with the crunch. Crunch is quite OCD friendly, until it is not.
While I got back to coding, I'm interiorly struggling about if I can arrive to a compromise in coding speed, I'll get back to my previous speed by some chance, or I'll have to settle with being slow 'cause I can't crunch any longer. I'll see.
The thing I need (and it's not a small thing), is to learn to work less obsessively. I don't know if I'll be able, It's going to be hard but I need to learn how to do that, or again, that I'll just have to settle with being slow.
That's why if sometime I talked about future games in Discord this past year I often said that I planned to make them in a different way; a way more optimal for a single dev;
More coded based gameplay and less story coded gameplay. As I mentioned sometime about Ken Levine (Bioshock lead designer), It is disappointing to spend 4 years making a singleplayer game that the player can play thru a weekend. (Same as I spend months of work for an update a player can play thru some hours... But at least with my game options the player that can see all the options can replay it more)
So my idea is obviously to make games that the player can play lots of times, thru gameplay, with less trivial scenes and more important scenes that are unlocked thru gameplay, while not the scenes itself being the gameplay. (I've been years making prototypes to find the better way to mix this in something that I'll and you'll like... and for sure I'll start asking you next year when some viable prototype starts taking shape)
Making most gameplay based on story and not automated code makes everything a lot of work. It is a game like BFL demmands, and I had no problems taking 4 years on making it (Making a 30-40 hours long story driven game like this is what it takes), but was just the stress from being on Patreon that caused the problem. But again, without Patreon I could not had such good testers that will had help me depure each part of it along they way.
So that's of course the reason I'm not going away (and it never was an option), I need you to play and leave feedback on my games!
Some of you have asked how you can help, I'll drop you some ideas:
-Be happy! And play those BFL routes you didn't played yet :P
-Send me bugs! I always get some extra energy when I have to fix some bug.
-Don't send me more typos for a while! :( I have some days of work of typos to fix already in the grammar channel in discord.
-As always word of mouth is the best, so just talk good about BFL around ;)
-And If you want to drop any extra tips, (I'll never complain about tips as doesn't feel as a contract for me) you can always buy the game on itchio or gamejolt with some custom amount :P
And again, thank you all for all your posts, messages, privates, and comments, you're incredible ;)
PS: I hope you enjoy the art ;) Attached on 4k.