Development Cycle Poll (Patreon)

Greetings!

I'll have some more to say about development progress in another post, but lately I've been considering some ideas about the development cycle that I'd really like some input on. 

Up to this point, I've envisioned each release of The Proteus Effect as sort of like a chapter in a book. Each one was a self-contained little unit that told a specific chunk of the story. This isn't the only way to put out releases. One that a lot of other developers seem to use is to package a quest or two and an H-scene together and put that out as a release. The obvious advantage of doing things the latter way is that the developer is able to put out releases on a much more consistent schedule.

The way I do things now, each release feels like its own little story, and I've always liked that. The downside, of course, is that creating everything that belongs in a given chunk of story can take a long time. I'd always thought I was prioritizing the story by doing things as I have been, but now I'm not so sure. I wanted each release to feel like a 'chapter,' and I suppose they do. But if I were to organize things based on the plot, it would probably look like this:

1. Introduction: We encounter the protagonist and his situation. Roughly covers release 0.1.
2. Welcome to Zameroth: Alex and Ana explore their strange new world and get some clues about how to return home. Roughly covers releases 0.2 and 0.3.
3. It Ain't Easy Beating Green: Alex and Ana explore Ogremarsh and are introduced to their principal obstacle for this part of the story: the Dragon. Roughly covers release 0.4.
4. The Bunnies of Doom: Alex and Ana need allies, and find them in a guild of lovable casuals, The Bunnies of Doom. Roughly covers releases 0.5 to 0.8.
5. It's Going to Take an Army: Alex and Ana work to assemble the mightiest forces in Ogremarsh for a final showdown with the Dragon. (You are here)

This isn't perfect, and there are other ways you could have done it, but I think it does highlight that releases haven't mapped perfectly to plot events. Something else I've become aware of lately is that this 'chapter'-based approach keeps me from thinking about the overall plot as I'm writing. This is good in some ways, since I sometimes come up with interesting things I'd never planned on, but I have found it difficult to control the pacing of the story.

So, lately I've been taking another look at the idea of decoupling release schedule from story progression - the 'episodic' vs 'periodic' debate, as I've thought of it. Under this model, I'd have a given set of things I want to happen between points A and B in the plot. Story events, sidequests, H-scenes, etc. I could then work through these items, as well as adding any interesting ideas I have while writing, and package the bits I have completed in, say, a month into a release.

Here's a rough sketch of what it might have looked like for the 0.7 to 0.8 period:

7.1: The miniboss fight, Kobold Town, and perhaps a bit of the dungeon.

7.2: The succubus H-scene.

7.3: The rest of the dungeon and the boss fight.

8.1: Shiri's quest and Ren's quest.

8.2: The Alex-Val-Ana H-scene.

8.3: Cory's quest and Jovi's quest.

8.4: Val's quest and Ana's quest.

You'll notice one thing right away: not every release would have an H-scene. There are two reasons for this: both of these scenes are very large, and my scenes take a long time to make. It's pretty consistently taken me about half a day to set up an image, and about another half day to do the postwork for one, so each image takes me roughly a day in total. (Render time is now, thankfully, much less of a factor.) The 'roughly monthly' release schedule would probably cause me to favor smaller scenes, but I'd still want to retain the flexibility to make really large scenes if I think it's deserved (and I think it was in the 'threesome' scene!) But yes, some releases wouldn't have any H-scenes, and some releases would consist only of a new H-scene. But they'd be a lot more frequent.

 There's another downside to doing things on the 'roughly monthly' schedule: you'd see a lot more 'not yet implemented' messages. You'd go to talk to a person you're supposed to talk to, but they wouldn't be able to do what you need them to yet. Or you'd go somewhere and it would be closed. Or a new area might not have a lot of people to talk to or things to do yet. My big concern is that this could be bad for immersion. You're going along, getting lost in the story, and all the sudden you're jolted out of that by a 'not implemented' message. All the same content would eventually get there, but it would accumulate over time rather than being dropped in big, continuous chunks. 

 So what do you think? This would be a big change, and I haven't really made up my own mind about it. I'm going to open this up to a poll, but I'd really appreciate some comments telling me your thoughts about all this. Particularly from longtime patrons. This sort of question is probably better for a survey than a poll, but I am interested in what the poll's going to say. 

Poll question: Should I go with a 'chapter'-based release schedule (fewer large, complete releases) or a 'roughly monthly' schedule (frequent smaller, incomplete releases)?