Status Update Episode 8 (Patreon)

Another week and so much has been done, but there's also so much left to do.

As I said last week, I've been focusing a lot on animations for two weeks now. It's the real bottleneck in game development and I really want to do everything I've planned, that's why I'm doing it first.

I have about 5-10 unique animations left to do. So far 22 (of which 14 are unique) animations have been rendered and the quality is better than usual, thanks to the new graphics card you guys helped me purchase.

This week, I haven't gotten around to rendering any more standard renders due to this, so the count is at 188.

I have been writing a lot of the script this week and I'm close to being done with one of the major branches. Besides from other major branches there's a multitude of smaller to mid-sized branches left to write, so I have a lot of work left to do even here.

A rough estimation on the completeness of the script is 33%. I cannot put an estimate on the total progress, yet.

At the moment I'm splitting time somewhat between the two projects. This is a strategy I'm employing to be able to fully utilize my equipment while ensuring that I have an update of the new game not too long after Episode 8 is released.

Acting Lessons is priority number one and there isn't a single second that one of my two PCs doesn't render for Episode 8, using two 1080 TIs, but you should know that I use my second PC to work on BADIK for two out of seven days of the week.

Creating an update of a game is easy compared to starting from scratch. When developing updates for Acting Lessons I'm working with an established framework. I have a streamlined process for scripting the game and creating art, so there are seldom challenges that halt progress.

When I create BADIK I need a new framework. It is not the same type of game, as I will introduce new gameplay mechanics and ways of presenting the art. I need to iterate and test my new ideas before they become streamlined. That's why I need more time to release the first update than what I will need for a second update.

My current aim is to release Acting Lessons in December and BADIK in January/February. But I'll keep you updated every week on the progress.

Changes to the Patreon tiers and Discord server

As I've said before, there will be changes to both my Patreon page and the Discord, after Episode 8 has been released. When Episode 8 is about to be released I will present the planned changes in Patreon tiers, that applies to the new game.

For the Discord server, expect a level reset after Acting Lessons Episode 8 has been released.

From a patron standpoint, there are both changes for the better and changes for the worse. For me as a single developer, all of these changes make my life easier and let me work faster on the game updates which is the primary reason I'm doing all this and why you support me.

Changes that will be made in general are as follows:

No more Extra version of the game.

The game will be the same for every patron. This makes game development faster and gives everyone a better experience.

No matter the version you'll be playing, there will be animations and special renders in it.

Tiers will change as a consequence and an early-release system will be employed instead of the current Extras model.

Regarding the tiers, what I know today and wanted to let you in on early is this:

$5 - Access to BADIK two weeks after each release
$10 - Access to  BADIK three days after each release
$25 - Access to  BADIK on release day

To emphasize, these changes happen after Episode 8 has been released.

No more walkthrough for the game.

I'm dropping the walkthrough since it will save me a lot of time that can be used on game development instead. I may consider making a walkthrough for lewd scenes later in the game development cycle, but not at launch for each update.

No more Android version.

This is a hard decision for me, but after thinking about this for the last two months I have decided that I must discontinue support for Android with the new game.

Acting Lessons will still be on Android.

I know that this can seem frustrating from a player standpoint, so I wanted to give you the reasons as to why I'm dropping that support, from a single developer's standpoint:

1. There are always extra bugs and issues with installation for users. For each release, this takes me about one full work day to resolve. Time that I can utilize better for game development.

2. I have to reduce image sizes as there is a 2 GB limit of the distributed .apk files. The game quality suffers from this and it's another time sink. I want to increase the render quality in the next game and Android doesn't allow me to do this.

3. RenPy mini-games doesn't port well to Android. The next game will include mini-games and I simply don't have the resources for beta testing and fixing Android issues. I will not support any unofficial ports.

4. A survey I did showed that 80% of players play on PC and about 10% on Android. As the survey didn't say play "exclusively" on Android, I'm guessing that the percentage is even lower if they had to choose only one platform.

5. Building/uploading/releasing/managing multiple versions of the game takes more time than you can imagine. Cutting this fat and just building for PC/Linux (1 build) and Mac (1 build), will make it so much easier for me to develop the game. I will go from releasing 8 versions of the game to a mere 2 versions.

I will also stop doing crunched versions of the game, but when the binary size hits a big enough limit, 3-4GB, I will split the game into parts to make the download process easier.

I'm sorry for the bad parts of the news, but it's a final decision for me. If I could work with game development full-time or could afford a team that helped me, the situation would likely have been different. I hope that you understand that I make these changes to be able to deliver a better experience for you while being more efficient.

Have a nice weekend!

Dr PinkCake