08/31/2022 Update - New Beta Build + New Policy Re: Weekly Updates (Patreon)

First I want to address that I haven't been keeping patrons up to date with what I've been doing nearly as much as I'd like to. I always intend to do weekly updates with my progress, but with the latest additions made it didn't feel like I had a lot to show for my work. I don't think that's a good enough excuse: even if it's just a screenshot
or technical explanation I should be posting something. With that in mind I intend to put pressure on myself to do better. Starting next month (the weekend of September 3rd) if I don't make a weekend update without prior notice (i.e. for holidays or the 4 weeks of vacation I take throughout the year) I will donate $500 to a charity chosen by patrons (recommended in discord/community posts, and then determined by a poll).

I don't want others to be concerned about my mental health, I'm aware of how my mind works and know that I'll be fine with this. Without getting in to much personal details my brain is wired to be efficient, cheap, and anxiety avoidant. Currently, the cost of missing an update is nebulous so my brain doesn't mind paying that cost for avoiding the anxiety of making an update post that I'm less than happy with.  By putting a price tag on missing my commitments I'm hoping to make myself more motivated to make updates even when I'm not happy with them, and using that unhappiness to motivate me to make better updates, instead of how it currently motivates me to avoid making the updates altogether. The goal is to never have to pay for the missed updates, but the consequence needs to be there and real for my brain to realize it as a motive.

That beings said, this month I've been working on making a new UI system to be used in the improved toy box as well as future titles. The goal is to make high quality reusable UI scripts that can be used in all games made by me in the future. To achieve this I'm attempting to recreate some of the functionality in Windows/Linux/Mac OS with moveable and resizable windows. You can preview the new UI in the (currently non functional) toy box of the beta build attached, the window can be dragged by the bar at the top, closed with the "X" button, and resized by clicking and dragging the bottom right corner.

I also fixed some minor bugs, including readding sound to Fredrika's game over scene and fixing the wrong error message coming up for when the game fails to open a browser window.