A Weird Start To 2022 (Patreon)

Hi!

This is going to be a long post that's going to go over quite a few things. None of them are alarming or urgent! It's all going to be plans for the year going forward with my two games (and beyond) as well as an explanation for why things have been a little quiet on my end this week, along with a little reflecting on 2022. I'll also have that kobold story up and posted not very long afterward, so ... if you're itching to read some actual macro/micro, I'll have you covered there, too.

In other words, good stuff! Mostly dev blogging or just blogging. Keeping you in the loop.

So, let's start talking ...

A Weird Start To 2022

So I had a bunch of scary laptop issues over the past couple of days and admittedly it's effected my output slightly to the point where I've had to shuffle a few things around on my schedule. To cut a long story short, frequent crashes were happening that were erasing data as it was being worked on but I managed to fix it. To make a short story long ...

I was working on Tiny Furry one night and my computer suffers a super hard crash. I turn it back on and the version of Tiny Furry that I was working on is now nonexistant. Great! Luckily I keep backups of everything in duplicate after the last time I almost lost everything I've ever worked on so I didn't lose any of that, but ...

Laptop kept crashing. Scary! I figured maybe a Windows Update had bodged or something so I reinstalled Windows and it seemed to be good for a while but after a day or so it started crashing again and I didn't really know what to do. It was scary opening up stuff to work on it while having this looming threat of a crash hanging over your shoulder that would also wipe whatever you were working on. Sure, I have backups, but what if it got my backup? And my backup backup?

Anyway after getting some advice from a friend I ran this memory diagnostic doodad and it told me I had an issue with one of my RAM sticks. So I pulled one out and it said that I had no issues and true to it's word, for the past 48 hours at least, there have been no issues. Great! So I've been able to work on stuff pretty happily over the past couple of days and it's been full steam ahead.

Anyway. The reason it's a weird start is because apparently this is happening to a lot of people. Like three people separate to me have had crippling RAM issues. At least I'm not the only one? But, who knows! It might be you next.

It's also a weird start because it's naturally effected production a bit. Same with me getting migraines for three days in a row because my body hates me. But hopefully these things won't be issues anymore.

That was a long and boring story, probably. Sorry! Here's some more interesting stuff.

Plans For A Tiny Furry In A Huge World in 2022

I think at this point it's pretty well established that A Tiny Furry is something that I'm going to keep adding to until the end of time. Updates have slowed down on it considerably because I've been working on other projects, but the game still got twenty something endings last year and I'd like to add even more this year. 

So expect stuff for this peppered throughout the year. There's plans for at least two brand new characters and a whole new dorm rooms style area to be added to the game at some point this year. I'm not sure when - it's probably something I'll be working on in the background after v1.2 launches at the end of the month (hopefully, more on that in a sec) so that it doesn't mess with the development of other things too much.

As for v1.2 it's going to feature a brand new side story involving Rachel - AKA that one shrunken dog from Emily's route. In it she's going to be not so shrunk - as in, she's regained her size - while you still remain tiny and small! This has been commissioned by someone super generous so it's going to be a pretty big thing. Like a 30,000 word expansion to the game - big enough that I'm considering releasing it stand-alone as well as packed in just to show off, really.

Speaking of showing off it's tempting to post screenshots of what's already been made, but, I am going to relent and instead just wait to surprise people (hopefully) at the end of the month. It's cool! It's not like anything that I've ever really done before in either of my games. A brand new experience ... kinda!

It's going to be relatively slice of lifey but there are going to be (optional) dream sequences that involve more ... graphic macro/micro encounters. Obviously most of these will pertain to vore so that the strand isn't completely dry of it. Again - if you just want the fluffy stuff - these dreams will be optional.

Apologies if I'm being vague ... it's just ... this one is going to be special, seriously! I don't want to give away too much.

I'm aiming to have this fully completed by the end of this month, but ... it's really going to be quite large so there's a fairly decent chance that I might have to push finalizing it halfway into February or so. There will be an update this month that'll have the three endings that I'll be polling extremely shortly plus the bulk of this Rachel content but there might be some stuff missing that I'll be working to add ASAP. If this happens I'll also poll another bonus ending or two to be added.

Speaking of polls, tomorrow, I'll fire those up! (actually I lied I'm going to do it on the 14th :3)

In short, expect a huge content drop that'll be full of character and world building and (optional) vore and hey they're really big and you're really small at the end of the month.

Hanners ending is coming soon also, just in case anyone is wondering!

Plans For A Tinier Furry In A Huger World in 2022

Tinier Furry In A Huger World? Oh wait, I mean ...

Yeah. It has an official title now! The logo is a bit of a WIP. I'm not a hundred percent sure about the colors or the fonts or the positioning or anything really, but ... here's a rough main logo for the game.

This title was suggested by somebody back when I asked for title suggestions. I'm not sure who suggested it because I didn't ask for names on submission so if the person who came up with this one wants to get in contact with me I'll make sure you get a credit in the game for the suggestion.

My commitment to A Tiny Furry On A Huge Quest this year is to get the game finished - or, at least, the first part of the game. Originally my plan with this one was to make a sprawling town for you to explore as a micro - A Tiny Furry but with a fantasy town instead of a college, basically - but as production rolled on it became clear to me that I wasn't going to be able to do that in one Quest file ... especially with how in-depth the tavern and prologue became.

To put it into perspective, the game is 200,000 words long and has something silly like 50 endings in it (and two actual endings) and by the time the tavern is done I estimate it'll have 400,000 words, almost 100 vore-related endings, and 4 actual endings that'll all be very different from each other where the credits roll and stuff. So ...

The game is going to end when you leave the tavern. Which means that when Gianna and the bard's content is in, the game is (aside from quite a few tweaks) effectively finished. There's a few more pieces of content I'd like to get in (a basement and an alternate route through the game where you can be a complete jackass and suffer consequences) but even with that in mind the amount of development time left is roughly five months or so. To break it down completely ...

- Gianna content is going to take a month to complete.

- Bard content is going to take a month to complete.

- Commissioned asshole route that alters the narrative of the game as well as a decent handful of the endings will take about a month to complete

- The basement content will take a month to complete. There's a good chance that I might end up cutting it to save time and working on it as bonus 'DLC' for after the game has been published. I really want this game out by Summer, and if one thing has to end up on the floor to get this done, it'll be this.

- I'll probably need about a month to clean up any UI bugs and other such annoying things as well as integrate some game art and fancy new vore-related UI features that I haven't really shown off yet, but ... I guess here's a tease.

That's it! So, yeah. I'll do my very best to get these done quicker, but I'm attempting to plan the rest of development out with reasonable timescales that aren't going to make me go insane or crash and burn into a big ditch.

Aside from that, I just want to say that working on this project has been great. I've said that a bunch before, though, so I'll save banging on for another paragraph or two about it. At the same time, though, I'm eager to release it and get it out there sometime after the Summer. As someone who used to release a game update publicly every month or so, it's been a bit weird to have developed a game for over a year without having shown any of it outside of here.

So given that I'll be working on Tiny Furry this month and maybe next month, we're looking at A Tiny Furry On A Huge Quest being completely complete around the Summer. Which means ...

Plans For A New Game To Be Developed in 2022

So, yeah, I'll be starting development on a new game this year - at some point. Whether that's A Tiny Furry On A Huge Quest Part Two or a new game entirely or maybe some more A Tiny Furry stuff is going to be determined by a poll that'll take place in the middle of the year. It's something to look forward to - for me, at least. There's a genuinely great energy that comes with firing up a brand new project ... and I'm looking forward to stepping into something that isn't making an addition to a 200,000+ word years old project. Even if it's a sequel or whatever it's a fresh start of sorts.

I'm not really sure if it'll be made in Quest like the other things have been or if I'll step into another engine or if I'll try my hand at making something in Java or something wild like that. There are advantages and disadvantages to using Quest and there are advantages and disadvantages into forging into a new engine. I think it will be something that'll be decided at the time, honestly. I think it'll probably be Quest because despite the disadvantages of the client it's a pretty solid and consistent way of getting my work out there, but ... I'll definitely be looking into other options over the next few months to see if I can find something a touch more flexible.

Commission Plans for 2022

I'll still be writing these and posting these, basically!

I imagine for this year at least they will continue to remain my bread and butter - but after A Tiny Furry On A Huge Quest releases and has settled in, maybe I'll be able to focus purely on Patreon. Growth has been good and retention has been super solid. For now, though, I have to do half story half game work as usual!

Stretch Goals

I'll be altering my stretch goal soon. I'll be making a longer blog post about this but the main point is that I can already afford to add art to the games. The issue is finding a consistent artist who is also familiar with the games themselves. I'm currently working on this, but it's not something that might be in place by the time said stretch goal is achieved ... and if I can already afford to add art and am working on that, then it's kinda pointless anyway.

I do have one artist working for me (Lemondeer, who provided the lovely silhouette above) but her schedule is jam packed and she's not going to be able to do much other than the silhouettes for me. So for actual character art I'm going to need to find someone else.

I'm not really sure if I'll be able to go back onto two-week updates at that tier either. That might be something for a slightly higher amount. I'm going to reassess it over the next few days and then post a bigger thing about it with a full explanation and justification for everything.

I think that's it! I'm going to have that kobold story up lickety split. Other than that, I'll see you tomorrow with a poll!

No more migraines or weird fucked up RAM issues that turn your computer into something out of a Vinesauce corruption video. We're full steam ahead from here!