Dev Diary #95 + important announcement (Patreon)

Shit, I completely forgot that it's already spring and I haven't done the new images... I'll use last year's, no one will notice, nope. Straight to the point? That would be best.

If you want to go straight to the important announcement, go to the end of the post.

This diary was going to be for patrons as I didn't write any last week but I have several important things to comment on that are of common interest.

I'd tell you what I've been doing these last weeks but nothing really interesting apart from not much sleep, but that's usual for me.

I've been fixing bugs, the second-anniversary game, planning the next update... the boring part of all updates.

I have to say something about the second anniversary: The game, in the end, is nothing as I planned at the beginning. This drastic change is due to the simple fact that the original idea, although short, was a mess to program so it was going to take more time than I wanted to spend, so in the end I changed to something simpler. Still, it took me a few days of work but it's finished now. In fact, next week it will be available for everyone, on Monday to be exact, LA's anniversary date (24/04). Anything interesting about it? Spending a day with Vanessa in Gold Valley.

On the other hand, I don't know if I mentioned it but I'll mention it again: In May, Patreon will disable the "goals" feature. Apparently, it's not as useful as they first thought, so with all the changes they're making, removing that feature is one more in the list (said by themselves, not textually). That means I've already disabled it on my side even though they will do it automatically next month.

However, that won't stop us from having goals here but it will change a bit how it works: Taking advantage of the fact that I already have a post I made when I first started on Patreon, I'll keep using that post. The difference is that it's not at the level of earnings but related to the community (patrons). I have to revise the post to see if I can add more goals.

As a last addition to this topic, I don't forget the goals:

• Enable the Renpy updater (which won't happen for a long time if ever).
• Website (this will be the next thing I will work on, probably in the summer/autumn).

The updater thing is easy to think about, it requires a lot of work and/or a lot of constant money, which I don't have. And I add: I'd rather invest in my Proofreader and that all my projects have a better narrative quality rather than go through all that trouble to save a couple of clicks / not download the full game every time. However, I don't rule it out in the very distant future.

And for this last point, I've spent all day reorganising the game files to be able to do something similar to an updater, which is a practice I've seen from time to time in non-sandbox VNs: Base game + updates.

But let's take it one step at a time...

• The base game will have all content up to v0.15.0 (~5GB)
• Updates will have all future content from v0.16.0 (??GB).
• The way to update it will be super simple but will require minimal interaction with the game files. This means deleting and replacing, has no mysteries but I'll write a guide for it, as it's obvious.
• At the moment, this is planned to be available only on Patreon, both for public versions and the Patreon version itself.
• Elsewhere (Itch, F95, etc)... I still have to look at it in detail. So the full game will still be uploaded and it will work as always.

If this turns out to be something that works out well, it will speed up my work when releasing new versions and especially bug-fixes versions as the updates will be considerably smaller in size.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out, honestly.

As I need to do some testing... it brings me to the last point of the diary and that is the important announcement: The public release of the next version (v0.16.0) will be delayed.

To be more precise, this version will be delayed 1-2 months but only the public version. I still have to figure out how exactly I'm going to do it for Patreon, but patrons won't notice any difference, only in content.

I don't want to go too long on this topic or I will need three diaries to explain everything but... the reason for the delay of the public version is the simple fact of public opinion. The first impressions (public) are important to get here and consider to support me financially so taking advantage of that I want to make tests with the above explained, v16 will be divided into 2-3 parts.

First will come v0.15.5 and then v16 (if I need one more version, it will be v0.15.75 before v16).

What content will be in these versions? All the delayed since... ever? I'm tired to be always delaying things and in every update, it's more and more content delayed... (I started delaying everything when the Tavern update and there was no turning back after the Moonstars update). This, honestly, is an eternal spiral that I must stop now for the sake of content and professionalism.

So, even if I hate to delay a public version... I will do it. However, in order to continue offering content to those of you who are patrons, there will continue to be ~monthly content on Patreon.

I'll be detailing exactly what new content there will be but for the moment, I'm going to stop working on the relevant content (main story), so in these "half" versions that are coming, will be focused on adding all the extra content that should have been added for a long time, final revision by me of all the dialogues of the game, redo renders/animations (repeatable events, quests, achievements, general content, etc.), add features that should have been added a long time ago (new section in the girls' panel, a gallery for the hard mode, improve the Moonstars' interface, etc), hard mode balancing (includes adding more things to this mode), making a deep review of the easy mode to finally decide what will be available and what won't be available in this mode... and a lot of other stuff.

And that's all. As I say, it pisses me off, but I think it's necessary. Why leave it only available for Patreon? For the same reason that hard mode will be disabled for new games in the public version: First impressions or general impressions. If someone is already here supporting me, likes what I do despite the bugs that still exist in the public versions, and probably knows or will end up knowing how I work so releasing something "half-finished" on Patreon is not a problem unlike doing it in a public version. The impression a new player might get is important to me as well.

So, I'd rather delay everything a bit so I can focus on working on things I should have worked on a long time ago and so the public v16 will bring a final result of all that work plus the project will be considered officially in a "mature" state. That will mean different positive things but let's take it one step at a time.

And I think that's all... I apologise for the delay of the next update, but more than necessary, I see it as mandatory or this madness will never end.

Before I forget, from v16 onwards, the change log will be available for everyone from the beta. There's no particular reason other than if I want to post something on Reddit, I'm forced to provide the change log in the post (I think I mentioned it some time ago).

That said, see you next week!