Developer's Journal #7 (Patreon)

Hello everyone.  Completed, post-worked renders for the bar scene have reached about 230.  I've got 27 renders queued up for tonight and maybe 15 more to do after that, and then it will be done (the bar scene, not the update).  I imagine this will probably end up being one of the biggest scenes in the game, if not the biggest.  Things should move faster once it's done.

If it wasn't obvious just based on the demo, I expect this to be a huge game.  Not necessarily super long (estimate right now is maybe eight hours or so) but just with the sheer number of renders.

There's a balancing act here.  On one hand, making lots of renders takes lots of time, and leads to huge downloads.  But on the other hand, if you want to tell a story and convey nuance in the character's behavior, you have to use lots of renders with lots of variation within each scene.  I have to decide for each scene how much is too much, but I'm not going to publish a scene unless I feel I've produced the performance I need from the characters.  So you should expect large downloads from LDNA.

I had a bit of an epiphany this week.  Monday night I was up until about 1:30 a.m. doing work for my "real" job; it was possibly the only day since last December that I haven't done any work on LDNA.  I've always worked a lot of late nights and weekends for my job, but Monday night I was really irritated about it.  I didn't want to stay up working, and in fact I've never wanted to stay up late working on my job; I do it because the work needs to get done.  But that night my mind went back to the week prior.  There had been three nights that week where I stayed up until 1:00 a.m., 1:30 a.m., and 3:00 a.m. working on LDNA.  And each time I was up at 6:00 a.m. the next morning to get ready for work.  And yet for all three of those nights never once did I mentally complain.  Staying up late working on this game has become a part of my daily routine over the last eight months and it just has never bothered me.  In fact, I frequently am upset about the fact that my body is exhausted and needs sleep because I'd rather stay up working on the game.

What does that mean?  Well, probably it's not that surprising.  Developing my own game is awesome.  It's a job that a lot of people would want.  But it's not my job, it's something I do in my spare time (all of my spare time).  And yet I'm happy to be doing it.

I think you guys have a lot to do with that.  While I enjoyed working on the game even before I released it publicly, my mindset has changed now.  It's both rewarding and motivating knowing that there are people out there who like my work product enough to support me financially.  I'm not just making this game for myself anymore--I'm also making it for you.

So if I haven't said it enough, I'll keep saying it: Thank you for your support!  It means a lot to me.

--The Impious Monk