Week 26 - $20 tier update, RPG Choices (Patreon)

Few things to go over this week!

$20 Cap & Description

The most pertinent for some of you is I have upped the cap on $20 tier supporters from 40 to 45. The reason I keep a tight cap on this is because my free time is a (very) finite resource, and I do not want to over promise in regards to the personal, 1-1 help that comes with this tier. This hasn't been too demanding of late, and some patrons had expressed the desire to move up to this tier but for it being capped. 

So I have decided in my great benevolence to allow you the privilege of giving me more money if you would so desire! 

In seriousness though, I have noticed there is an impact of having a 'capped' tier that has made it possibly appear somewhat more attractive or 'exclusive'. Or makes it feel like you have to get in quickly. I don't really feel I have much control over that effect and I want to be clear it isn't the point of the cap! I worry that it might appear that way from the small increments I add to this cap, but I want to be clear that the reasons are to protect my free time and keep myself able to actually fulfill the promises made. If I feel very comfortably able to do so, I'm (obviously) happy to bring in more pledges.

Part of me wants to completely commit to never reducing the cap, but I'm wary of how unpredictable life here can be. I will at least say I have no intention of ever reducing the cap and I take increases to it very seriously.

The other change I've made just now is a subtle but meaningful change to the tier description:

It feels quite sketchy to me that I'm allowed to change this so freely without notifying patrons. I suppose it makes sense on an editorial level for things like spelling mistakes, and harmless fixes, but I feel like after your page launch these things should require you to make some sort of statement on the change? So that's what I'm doing!

It's just another clarity change. Nothing has materially changed in the rewards at all. Previously line 3 here read as "Add me on Discord" and I think many patrons were lead to believe I had a private discord server. I do not. I simply use Discord (and often the r/GameMaker subreddit discord server) and welcome DMs and messages from my Patrons on here about their issues. I also specified this could be over Patreon messages as well and added "Project issues" to help clarify the kinds of things I can help with. 

I also reworded the free access to put emphasis on "all" and changed the word "rare" on the final line to be the word "occasional". As rare sounded like I was talking up the exclusivity of this reward, rather than emphasizing the fact it doesn't happen very often. (I wanted to do the latter.)

RPG Choices

After far too much umming and ahhing about how exactly to go about this, the ARPG now has dialogue choices and responses.  

It's implemented in the simplest way I could imagine while still being at all manageable and scaleable. I think it will need a minor refactor or two before the videos start, but as it stands it's highly flexible. You can run any code in response to a specific dialogue option. Shown above is a simple dialogue tree in action, but also a signpost that can spawn slimes! Anything is possible.

This gif above was also made from *inside gamemaker*. I released a video last week showing how this is possible. It was a good opportunity to get recent pledgers in the credits for something! As I keep saying, I'm sorry for the lack of regular-regular videos, that's just the current nature of this current beast. 

That's all the headlines from me for last week. Thanks again for all of your support!

-S