An extremely important poll. I need your vote! (Patreon)

Hello! Welcome to August. Once again, thank you for staying with me.

First of all, the new public version of v0.9 is almost ready, I just need to scatter the music tracks across the script, and we're ready to go. Just wait a little, it will be up today. For now we have a big subject to determine, that will affect the entire course of Shattered. At least for some time.

Yes, it's the schedule. As I already mentioned in the past, I'm at the current limits of my abilities. With so many routes to handle (and even more coming up next with the bimbo path and whatnot) it's pretty much impossible to fill them with meaningful content and stay on par with the monthly schedule. Which is why I need your opinion on that matter: should I keep the current one-per-month release schedule or go for once-per-three-months? And before you can answer, allow me to explain the difference, and why I definitely urge you to vote for the latter.

First of all, it's not just a matter of time. I want to make my updates significant, consistent and comprehensive. They all have their own specific themes that I tackle. They should have the beginning and the end. But 12–14 events that I make on average is clearly not enough. I have to cut some things and rearrange the others, sometimes even making two events consecutive instead of mutually exclusive (which would be more interesting), just so the game wouldn't end in ten minutes. Three months will let me to put up to 50 different scenes in the update, significantly widening the possible spectrum of Blake's adventures.

Second: the routes themselves will get longer. I may even be able to make Blake live with one of his romantic interests, now that I don't need to create the «hub» scenes at home which he uses as his pivot points. I want to give every main route at least three fully-shaped scenes with several smaller ones, and for the secondary ones it's gonna be 2+.

Third, you might say: but I don't want to wait for three whole months to get some new content to play! It's very much understandable, and which is why I will create smaller Patreon-only demo-version every month. Naturally, these will get stolen pretty quickly, so I'll give you more options to affect the story and its progression as a compensation. More polls with bigger variety incoming!

Fourth, just content itself. Three months in a long time, and it will probably let me make 500+ renders each time. I will also be able to spend more time on the visual style: choosing better assets, playing with Blake's appearance (as well as other characters), maybe adding some other technical details that make the picture prettier, but demand more rendering time. It will all be feasible now.

Fifth, my own time. Now I'll be able to actually plan the development cycle without hoping for windows of time between my jobs. I could actually say to myself: this month I'm gonna spend 25 days on renders and 14 days on writing. And even if that won't happen, I can always catch up next month. Last month I spent every weekend writing the script for 14 hours straight. I can only imagine how much that affect the quality of my writing. This whole thing will just go smoother now that I won't need a four days pause between the test and public versions. That's almost two weeks in three months! I can use that time much more effectively.

And if you're still not convinced, let me put it like this: I'm not saying that every update from now on will take exactly three months. I can finish them quicker if things are going okay. What I need is for you to allow me to spend more time on the updates. But I can promise you that the three months mark is the ceiling here. It will never take longer than that. When I discussed that subject before, some of you expressed concern that the game will lose a lot of exposure and stop gaining new subscribers. But I can live with that. I never planned to become a millionaire developing Shattered. What I want to do is to give you, my current patrons, an actual meaningful experience and tell Blake's story the way I want it to be told. That's my only mission. So, even if the new schedule option isn't going to win now, I'll come back to it later. It's that important.

Let's vote! How should I develop v0.10 and every other update from now on?