Progress Report (Patreon)

Alright! This will be the last true progress report before release. Though, depending on how things go, I might pop up a quick note or two with mini updates. Obviously, with all other rewards for this month already having been released, the sole topic here is Haven's Port.

Unfortunately, the news is...iffy. On the plus side, rendering is 100% done and programming is 90% done. On the minus side...I still need to actually do all the writing, an editing pass, then test/publish. I'm fairly confident I'll be able to knock out 10 or so of the 18 scenes today, along with the remaining 10% of the code. But that's because Sunday's are typically my single most productive day of the week, as I don't do any day job material on Sundays. Mondays, conversely, are my worst productivity days for game stuff...because I have the most day-job stuff to do on Mondays.

You can, I think, see the dilemma already.

Were this literally any other month, I'd be 100% confident I could finish the build on time. With it being the shortest month of the year, though, I'm down to just 2.5 days. If things go super smoothly, it's theoretically possible I could hit the midnight deadline for end-of-the-month release on the 28th. Frankly, though, I think it's a bit unlikely. It's far more likely that we are looking at a March 1st or March 2nd release date. 

That's annoying, but it wasn't entirely unexpected, between the delay from Left Hand Magic running into this month and this being the shortest month of the year I had an upfront choice to make. Either make a smaller than usual build...or say screw it and go for a full size build and risk it overrunning by a day or two. With Haven's Port not having gotten a release since November (due to The Morning After) and the November release being a bit on the smaller side do to a death in my family at that time...I went with the second option. 

Make no mistake. This is a full sized Haven's Port Build. 115 Renders, 18 new scenes. With 2 of those scenes being extra-long and a few more of them being in the 6-8 render range. I choose to accept the possibility of delay to make sure that was the case. Sadly, that delay looks likely. I still think it was the right choice though, particularly since March is a 31 day month and it won't be hard to absorb a day or two of loss into that. 

On one final note. Everyone should be aware of this, as Patreon claims people will be alerted. But earlier in the month, I finally gave into the harassment Patreon itself has been putting on creators to switch over to a payment model where you are charged on the day you joined, rather than always on the first of the month. Honestly, it shouldn't really effect anyone but the newest of newbies to the Patreon (and them not very much). And it actually does make me feel a little bit better about small delays like this one as it's less likely for people to get shut out of a reward they should have gotten. 

I (and other Patreon pages) had resisted previously because it actually kinda sucks for the Patreon Page owner. Front-of-the-month charging for everyone meant that I knew by the 5th how many people I'd lost from month-to-month, and thus what sort of budget I had to work with. The more random pattern of the new payment method removes that certainty...but Patreon has been pushing hard to get us to switch -_-. So I finally gave in. Supposedly, they were supposed to inform everyone when I made the switch over. But I don't trust them to have done that, or for people to have read the notice. So...yeah. Like I said, it shouldn't really effect most of you. No one will end up double charged or any nonsense like that. It's just something to be aware of!

That's all for now, sorry that this got a bit rambly...haven't slept yet. Going to go do that now...