The Return (Patreon)

Hello all,

In less than 48 hours, my March break will be over and I'll be back to work. Patrons will be charged for the upcoming month of April, so if you meant to cancel your pledge in time, this is your heads up. 

As far as the break went, I ended up just taking the whole month off for myself (aside from preparing another Tiffany voice script for another 4 scenes to be recorded) after all. As you probably could tell given my lack of posts here. So I didn't do any real TD work, which was the original plan. Did the time off help? Idk. Everything I touch turns into "work" with deadlines, hobbies included. So I don't really feel any different headspace-wise. But I'm sure it helped subconsciously. Doesn't really matter in the end. The show must go on.

Which is what I'm here to give you all a heads up on today. My plans for April. I really want to just take the next month to work exclusively on the game, and not get distracted with additional content. There is a mountain of work that needs to be done for v0.10 so I really just want to sink my teeth into it every day without stressing about other commitments. What do I mean by this?

Well, for starters, I'm going to shelve the Xmas Special for now. It is already April after all... The reality is that there's a lot of work to do on that and I really don't have the time for it right now. Is it cancelled completely? No. I'll finish it when I can. Either slowly over time, perhaps for "Christmas in July" or even just as the 2021 Xmas special in December? (I only started it this year anyway...) Something like that. So yes, I will finish it, just later. Or at the very least, I don't have plans to work on it this month. Speaking of Holiday Specials, I also have no plans for an Easter Special or Halloween Special this year. Apologies to those of you who look forward to those kinds of things. I too enjoy making them. But since I've already lost 2 months this year to breaks of some description, I really can't justify the time for them this year. Especially when I am already committed to finishing the Xmas Special at some point. The thing is, a "Special" is no longer very special at all if it just causes further delays for an upcoming game update. The game's gotta come first.

As for comics, sneak peeks, discussion posts and polls. I suspect there may be some updates. But like I said, my main focus for April will be on the game. And the first phase of v0.10's development is not a very visual phase. I don't suspect I will be doing many renders this month. There may be some visuals to share (The video audio demo, if I get that done, for example), but I can't promise anything outside of in-game screenshots of new gameplay features or level design updates. I will try to update frequently when I have enough content to share though. There is a lot to do so I will have plenty to talk about even if I don't have too many sexy new renders to share. In the past, I have typically gone out of my way to start work on scenes or characters that I had no intention of working on yet, just to produce some images for you all to look at. But this month, I really just want to focus on the game itself without distractions. So I don't really think I can promise anything content wise outside of some semi-regular progress updates about what I've been up to with refactoring and overhauling the game's back-end. 

So again, this whole post is basically a heads up for April and what my plans are, posting wise. I understand most people probably pledge to get access to specific bonus content like comics, polls, discussions, sneak peeks, etc. So I just wanted to be open and honest with you all, and let you know that I don't have any specific plans for that during April. My main focus will be on the game itself so that I can try and make up for lost time without too many distractions. If you're only here for said bonus content, you may wish to cancel your pledge and re-pledge during May where normalcy should resume. Though it depends on how things go this month, to be fair.

Anyway, thanks for you patience and understanding during all of this. I am hoping to get a lot done in April now that I'm a little fresher and won't be so weighed down by other content. Hopefully you will be able to understand and appreciate that the game needs the most focus right now. I need to make real progress there before I can justify spending more time on other TD related things outside of the game. Thank you all for your continued support regardless. I look forward to getting stuck into development on v0.10 proper.

~ Jim