Friday Update #24: Sputtering Engine, Spinning Wheels (Patreon)

Everywhere you look he's not on time...

Hello everyone, CaptainCaption here, and despite going through a full round of antibiotics prescribed over the phone by my doctor, then inhalant steroids and other medicines after a clinic visit, I am still sick.
Thankfully, I am not quite as sick as I was, but at this point I'm going to have to see a proper pulmonologist and possibly a gastroenterologist as my general doctor wants to investigate the possibility of my coughing being caused by stomach acid shooting up my esophagus and getting trapped in my larynx. Fun...

Anyways, I am still hammering away at the update still, although reduced in scope. I am trusting my future self to finish the expressions quality checks of the earlier story content, and the playable Ms. Pac-Man clone in the arcade is being cut because there is no way I can justify making it an interactive game at this point with how late the release has been. I know I am sick, but a delay of 3 months isn't just plain ridiculous, it's unacceptable.

Anyways, what I have for you today is a story about work and play, but those of you who know me know that I love the sound of my own keyboard, so I'm probably going to make several side trips while telling it.

Many of the regulars of the active and busting re:Dreamer Discord server (invite here) have started playing getting together in the voice chat to play the world's favorite cat boy and cat girl simulator, the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV!
They've been active enough that I've had to create a new containment channel for FF XIV, demonstrating that re:Dreamer dad's has given up trying to control the noise levels from his daughters' unexpectedly popular open-invitation slumber party as long as they don't slip estrogen into his drink when he isn't looking or aren't setting the place on fire when he pokes his head in.

Sometimes that happens anyways, but I digress.

A number of the FF XIV players occasionally try pestering me into playing with them, but not only do I not have the time for that new rabbit hole, I don't think MMORPGs are for me, and the free trial has been rescinded because there were too many new players and the servers kept exploding from congestion.

As someone in a similar situation, I empathize with Naoki Yoshida.

During a recent attempt to turn me into a cat girl (because of course that's what these girls want me to play), a less frequent server member asked if I could make a re:Dreamer Minecraft server. I once again tried to explain that I didn't have time the to neglect work to frolic in the metaverse, even though I was so exhausted from a lack of sleep that I had essentially been staring at my Atom window for 3 hours and written only a few lines (to demonstrated how out of it I was, I had typed "actual" as "axual" and didn't notice that I had invented a homophone for like at least 10 seconds).

This individual (who was formerly a Student Transfer scenario writer, so it's not like she's giving an uninformed opinion about Ren'Py text editors) told me "see? thats where the issue is. you should use sublime text"
I explained that Sublime Text doesn't have many of the features Atom did that makes it so useful for re:Dreamer, and that'd I have to pay for a commercial license to use it because re:Dreamer is in fact a commercial game; plus, it's not a good idea to change tools when I am in the middle of an update that is wildly late.

Her response was "re dreamer? commercial?"

Hey, you (the person reading this) should watch the anime that this screenshot is from, Gugure! Kokkuri-san, if you haven't already. It is a very good comedy anime with a sharp dialogue and a darker tone to its humor reminiscent of Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita (Humanity Has Declined).

It also has an extremely good two-episode arc where the titular character, a handsome fox boy, gets turned into the cute, busty fox girl you see here and can't change back. Knowing Espeon's love of fox girls (which I share, but not as fervently) and Myumi telling me that he's essentially up for making as many sprite extensions as we can throw him, Zoey could very well wear this someday.
If FF XIV had a cute fox girl race that the girls who want me to play with them could tempt me with, their offer would be much more dangerous.

From there, I was honestly kind of stunned, and responded with "girl, this game makes money" "it is my job" to which she replied "so you are kinda living the dream right now arent ya" "writing tf as your main thing"

And my response:

Pretty much?

I'm not trying to sound glib, and while this is easily my favorite job I've had and I really enjoy the work (when I am not dying of bronchitis, underperforming from this, and feeling guilt and stress from being so late), I had a (mis?)understanding that this was essentially a long-form writing commission of a tailor-made visual novel for Espeon where there would be a division of labor between us were I was the writer and Espeon was the coder; however, what has ended up happening is that Espeon's role has broadly turned into that of a supervising producer and financier while I'm doing everything else. After the fervent push between us to get this game largely operational during those first 3 months of development, and much more after the somewhat recent shift in development focus away from Keisuke's content and towards Britney's, she started to take a more hands-off approach, which I get because her interest is in the game's het content, but that means that rate of development for Britney's content is far slower than I expected, which means developing that content is draining me faster than expected.

That's not to say that Espeon doesn't help re:Dreamer, because she has greatly contributed to this game in a multitude of ways to the point that her contributions are so varied and diverse that whenever I mention her to someone who knows I work on this game but doesn't know her (such as my speedrunning friends), I refer to her as "my boss slash producer slash editor slash financier slash suspiciously wealthy furry patron" (a title that she has politely asked me to shorten to "producer").

Off the top of my head, Espeon has contributed:

• Funding the art assets, be it royalty-free graphics or expensive commercial art commissions.
• Paying me $3,000 for my work in those first 3 months of development.
• Fixing some of my awful code (I am very bad at programming and have had no formal coding instruction outside of AP Computer Science in high school).
• Editorial advice with the writing and design documents for art assets.

But that leaves me with:

• The writing, although given how Ren'Py works with interwoven text, graphics, and audio, it's more accurate to say that this part is more akin to working in film in scriptwriting and directing.
• The bulk of the coding (minus when Espeon rescues my incompetent ass from the horrible cargo cult code I've made). 
• Designing and making all of the GUI assets (minus what I can get from icon packs).
• Creating design documents, some for the story, but mostly for artists' use.
• (Largely) finding the artists to commission to make the art those design documents detail.
• Managing the vast majority of the communication with those commissioned artists.
• Editing the art we've receive for stylistic consistency and functionality within the Ren'Py game engine.
• Community management on Patreon, social media, forum posting, and Discord, which includes distributing the game every release.

This is a fucking lot to manage, and while I'm generally fine with the workload (and it's not like I had much of an IRL social life or want a job that won't let me work from home during the COVID times, even if it would pay better), all development comes to a screeching halt whenever something happens to me.

Back in December 2019, I got really sick with a nasty stomach flu for over 2 weeks, and while my bronchitis' "I sometimes cough so much my head gets dizzy, I'm constantly tired, and I have trouble laying down and sleeping" isn't nearly as debilitating as that stomach flu's "I have a constant headache, stomachache, and nausea, I have so little energy I can't even get out of bed, and I can't hold down any foods firmer than rice," this game update is so complex that I needed to be on my A game to meet it on time, and for the past 3 months now, I haven't. It gives me constant anxiety to be this late, but every time I've tried dealing with that by pushing myself to keep working on the update despite being sick, I wind up tired, drained, and miserable the next day.

The silver lining to this is that because I am constantly thinking about re:Dreamer but unable to work on it as much as I would like, I have made some sizable story progression breakthroughs. I already had outlines for each of the routes (both in my head and written down), but because I've been constantly ruminating and mulling over the plot beats, they've become more fleshed out and vividly detailed than I normally bother to do. This is going to be healthier for development in the long term as I won't be thinking on my feet quite as much trying to come up with quite as many specific parts of the story when I have clear, specific outlines to follow for each scene, thus avoiding The Bad Times of "I didn't have a clear plan to link the two plot beats I wanted to get to, so I wrote Zach going into his head and giving a rambling lecture on thermodynamics and theology at the same time, both of which are tangentially related to the two scenes I did have a plan for."

In summary, I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.

In good news, I can at least see the light at the end of the tunnel of this update now and would probably have to actually die to not get it out in February.

Until next time!