The State of ALICE IN DISSONANCE - JAN2019 (Patreon)

 We got an E-Mail today from a longtime patron who’s asked us very kindly and in a civil manner about the progress of StP. It’s more than understandable because we haven’t been able to communicate with the community as of much lately but while I was writing the response, I noticed that I can redact certain information and make it sharable to the public… or at least to our patrons. I’ve been holding off on this because I didn’t want to A) first and foremost share information that we can’t promise, B) didn’t want to paint others in negative light and C) share a sob story and make it seem like we’re asking for pity. You know this day and age. You say 1 wrong thing, someone misinterprets it and the next thing you know you’re publicly shamed on social. But… it’s also been long enough that not sharing this would come off also as being disingenuous. Also it's 2019 and it's time to leave all the BS behind.

 So rather than answer the question of “what the hell is going on with StP”? Let us do a quick recap of what’s been going on with AiD in general in the past few years even if it might risk some of our patrons losing faith in us. I won’t contribute to slander or shit talking though… I'll only state facts in an objective way as much as I can. This is going to be the PG rated version as to not rile up litigations (who would have though eh..) Also another quick warning beforehand, I’m gonna do this off the top of my head. It’s been so long so please be kind if I get some of the timeline a bit mixed up. This isn’t an attempt to cover shit up or anything, it’s just been years of bullshit in the making.

 Let’s start right after MS2a’s release.

 By now it’s no secret that Ren’Py experiences random high-rate crashes when we use the 3D camera with multiple layers. We’ve done extensive testing and we’ve concluded it is irreplaceable; even when we cut down on our effects, it didn't seem to help. We’ve even contacted the creator of the engine, Ren’Py Tom, and he wasn’t able to help as well. This is an issue that’s been plaguing our games since the original release of ms2a and we were not confident to make such a big game like StP using an unstable engine especially when our assets are getting larger and sets more elaborate. Not only that but a purely sprite based engine like Ren’Py was becoming incredibly inhibiting. Blending mode behaviors were quirky at best, particles were there but very limited, and a bunch of other that I don’t even remember anymore. Basically it was time to move on. [Although I’ve said it multiple times in our Discord, I didn’t even want to publicly state this at the time because it sounds like we’re talking smack about Ren’Py and we’re not. It’s a fantastic tool for quick VN turn arounds and we have nothing much respect to Ren’Py Tom]

 Now, around this time when StP went into production, we were also tasked to port MS1 to the PlayStation Vita which unfortunately has now been cancelled due to Sony no longer accepting builds for the console. This was a part of our Kickstarter stretch goal as well (Jesus, do you remember that we started off as a Kickstarted VN group??). At this time we were also offered a chance to distribute our games via Nintendo Switch and PS4. This also meant that we’ve obtained the rights to distribute MS2a and StP through console as well, as long as we can get them ported. I can’t understate how much of a big deal this was at the time. Even though Nintendo was actively opening up their platform to indie creators, they were still very selective about which titles they wanted to put on their store. Same with PlayStation 4. With Ren’py not having the ability to port to console and us outgrowing the capabilities of the engine, the next step was obvious: Unity! This way we can use the base code of the MS1's port in StP and kill multiple birds with 1 stone! It seemed like a no brainer and the solution to the issue we were facing. What a wonderful and accessible time we are living in! Hooray for technology and the grassroots indie movement!!

 Man... we were so, so wrong.

 Granted, our games are visually more demanding than the average VN. But all it is is a layer based system, something that even the most basic compositing softwares can do with ease. How hard would it be to replicate it in a full featured 3D engine?? This is the part of the story where I have to redact certain information… but over the next 3 years, we will go through 4 entities / companies / contractors that will tackle this port, each one quoting close to year and everyone has either A) went radio silent and disappeared or B) just gave up right before the deadline. Remember how I posted about a certain new publishing group and how we might be parting ways with Sekai Project? Yeah, even they fell through too… and this is what happens when we give info out too early. When it doesn't work out it just looks like you’re blaming other people.

 At this point we’re in despair…or at least I was. It all seemed like a fucking joke. We’re talking about professional engineers here, and no one has been able to port our humble little visual novel. Then the talks of  finishing up StP in Ren'Py started. "But we'd have to port it to Unity anyway for console! We need to obtain the ability to release titles on schedule, especially for the console market! We can’t afford to miss out on the Switch market!“ Basically, if we're destined to disappoint people one way or the other by having massive gaps between a certain release, I wanted to get the growing pains over now instead of later. It seemed sensible at the time after all, who would have known that we were going to face continuous disappointment in the near future? 

 That being said we also needed to release something that had value and will add to the fault universe. As you all know, this is why Mhakna was born, still using the Ren’Py engine. It was suppose to be a rehab project for myself and the team to bring some life back into fault. It had a lot of unique assets but the effects were kept to a minimum… though crash reports kept coming in anyway, reenforcing the necessity of switching engines. After Mhakna, our in-house programmer has worked on the port for the better part of a year but missing deadlines were becoming a habit and with the end nowhere near in sight with multiple extensions, we had to ask him to step down. This was one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make in my life for a plethora of reasons… but unfortunately it had to be done. AiD has stagnated for long enough and everyday I was dying inside just that much more than the day before. This was around October of 2018.

 Now... after experiencing failure after failure that literally almost seems like some sort of conspiracy or bad joke, what do you tell your patrons? How do you look into the face of the those who’s providing you vitality every month with such negative news of misfortune, over and over again like some moping teenager? Again, this is the biggest reason why we weren’t  sharing much information about progress; it’s because a lot of promises ended up not panning out. Here are some other instances of misfortune: We had great relations with our music people… till one day they just disappeared. Same with our designer that we’ve been working for years, he just stopped responding to our e-mails. Why? What the fuck is going on? At this point you start to wonder… are WE doing something wrong? Like mistreating people? Underpaying them? We did research by talking to other developers but it turns out this kinda shit is normal. Freelancers will disappear out of nowhere. Friendships that took years to forge will break and relations will seize like it didn’t even exist. Trust becomes a rarity and words start to meaning nothing. We were a tiny ass visual novel group that grew too fast in a niche fashion and in a way we were paying the price for that in the long term. This is just how it is.

There is a silver-lining to all of this though...

We’ve found another programmer that's been working on the port for the past few months. He has been doing this for decades and has extensive experience using Unity. From what we can tell so far, he’s very dedicated, hardworking and has a keen interest in the fault series. I could have given this information out in October but I decided to hold my tongue till we have some sort of tangible proof that this time, this time, we can get this port working and thus enabling us to proceed with the god damn series. And I’m happy to say today that he has provided that confidence. In just 2 months, he’s pretty much completed the base port and we’re a week or so shy away from where Hare and I can go in and script the rest of the game out (in short, the base will be complete and we can make games on Unity without a dedicated programmer) and he did all of this from scratch. We’ve never even got to this point in the past; everything was one off's where the programmer had to code scenes themselves. The current code is running beautifully on the Switch, and I’ve seen it with my own two eyes. Camera tilt can be mapped to gyro like how it is on smartphones by default so it will look like youre looking into a 3D world. Layers are in actual 3D space. Camera is moving in said 3D space. There are proper particles. Games can be saved and loaded. Transitions are pretty much identical to the Ren’Py version. I’ve seen all of this in person too, with Switch in hand.

 There’s a lot of ifs and buts to this story. There's probably a lot of things that needed to be done differently. Even today I don’t know if the choices I am making are the right ones. But I haven't given up… mostly because of everyone here on Patreon that have patiently waited for the progress of our series. I’ll be honest. It’s pressure. We get emails every time a new patron joins or edits their pledge. It didn’t matter if they raised or lowered their pledge, “I’m so sorry” is all thats going on in my head. There are times where I was super close to figuring out a way to refund all our patrons and just shutting down our account. But what the fuck good will that do??? fault has become my life work, there’s a story I still want to tell that’s brewing in my since I was student. I can’t let go of this. I can’t imagine life where I abandon Selphine Ritona and Rune, at least not this little into the story. Even if everyone including all of our patrons were onboard to abandon the series and we get a fresh new start, my next story would be about… Selphine, Ritona and Rune. Or characters in similar circumstances.

But I digress….

“TLDR: So you bit off more than you can chew, big whoop wanna fight about it?”. That’s true if you want to boil it all down in one sentence. There’s obviously a lot of missing details from above because it’s not like we were sitting around doing nothing while the ports were coming along. Theres a lot I have redacted but this is the gist of story. This is how game studios collapse into nothing; a series of hideously unfortunate events. At the end of the day, we aren’t capable of programming so it takes a certain amount of luck to find someone who can fit the bill. It’s the number 1 lesson I’ve learned through out all of this  “If you need to rely on someone else to get something done you are no longer in control; it’s a dice roll from that point on”.

So what’s the plan now?

As I’ve stated in our new website blog post, I plan to make 2019 a brand new start for AiD. IF we can actually script the rest of MS1 out in the next 30-50 days, that means that MS2a and the current code we have for StP should be both ported in time for release within 2019, and we’ll be able to release all of our games from that point on both console and Steam at the same time (you know, the other major reason why we’ve been trying to do this port in the first place)!! This is assuming everything goes by plan but I’m quite optimistic because of the way the base coming along… but you know… “when it’s ready” is still the mantra, at least for now. Although if I may retort... there is no reason for us to delay anything as long as we have the capability to make games 100% in house. Mhakna was made in a few short months, and the time between MS1, MS2a and StP's demo isn't anything appalling. Scheduling has just never been much of an issue with us until we hit this Unity hell.

Now whether this instills confidence in you, patron, or has been really disheartening… I thank you either way for reading this essay of a post and being here as a supporter. It took a lot out of me writing this but I have nothing but gratitude and a deep sense of constant apology that’s very hard to express with words. Perhaps it should have been done sooner, but I wouldnt be able to bring you the good news at the end. 

Thank you again and if there’s one thing that you can take away from this post… please let it be this:

“We haven’t given up”

With much love,
-Munisix
ALICE IN DISSONANCE

PS - To that Patron who sent us that E-Mail. This post was inspired by you.