After Action Review (Patreon)

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.... that was rough. I'm so glad I finally got something out to you guys, but if you were tuning in, you would know how much I had to keep pushing the date back, and how much content I had to cut back on just to get this out to you. 

What follows are some notes about how development went, and what changes I'm making to prevent this from happening again going forward. 

Feel free to comment below on anything you read here. I love all your input.

First, Let's talk about the Development:

It took wayyy too long for me to get this out to you guys. To be clear, what I mean by that is that I bit off more than I could chew if I wanted to maintain my schedule of releasing approximately every 3 weeks. 

The last release happened June 16, and the latest release took place on September 15, with an update the following day on the 16th. I didn't plan on that, I just found it interesting that it happened 3 months later, to the day. Interesting, but unacceptable to me.

Sure, I could just say "releases will happen every 3 months from now on", but in my opinion that long gap creates a huge pressure to get everything "perfect" before the release, which just means it won't ever get released. 

Why did it take so long? In short, I assumed I could get a lot more done per week than I could actually achieve in reality. 

In my normal job, Im in charge of a team of developers and I am quite good at realistically setting goals for them. However, that assumes a nicely (somewhat) controlled environment in which you know exactly how much time and resources you can devote to a project. None of that is true for Edgeville. I have no idea how much time I'll be able to realistically spend working on it, nor how much energy I'll have left in the tank after doing all the normal work stuff. 

Sure, I can down a liter of Redbull and fuel my body with energy packed cheetos to pull an all-nighter (which I did frequently), but still, you can't expect to operate at that level consistently. 

How am I going to prevent that from happening in the future? Easy. It's the same solution that you fallback on when you have similar problems with managing a team. Just don't pack the sprint. 

What that means for Edgeville, is that I will simply plan on what I think I can achieve in 1 week, but give myself 3 weeks to do it. We'll try that and if It doesn't work then I'll bring that number down even more. 

If it just so happens that I can fit something else in after I'm done, then that would be fantastic. The point is to establish some sort of metric of how much I can achieve every release and use that from that point on. 

I want to take this time out again to say a big thank you to all of you again. When you are solo-developing like me, comments matter. And I know you guys are sharing some of your hard-earned money with me because you believe in the project - and that's not something I take likely. So your kind words and patience just makes my fucking day. 

Secondly, let's talk about the game itself:

The Tiered Release Schedule had to be modified. I released a "Test Build" for Patreons Benefactor and above. 

Everyone else will get the typical release this Friday. 

However, as an added bonus, I will make sure that the Friday release version will have as many fixes as I can make by then, so you will get a more stable release right off the bat. 

Future releases will go back to the Tiered release schedule (I'll make a handy chart later that explains this.

I tried a few new things for this release. The major change was done to how you as the player experience the HScenes. 

HScenes for Helen Parr were real-time 3D, meaning what you saw was being made by the game engine itself. This was the original intention of the vision for the game, because that would mean that you would see your own, customized 3D character in that scene (in future updates).

Dexter's Mom, however, involved 90% pre-rendered scenes. It looks more polished, and I'm capable of achieving more because it is not real-time. 

The huge problem with this is that we must be okay with the main protagonist having a non-changeable design and look. We'd have to throw away the "customizable character" aspect out. 

I'm not sure if I want to do that. However, I think it was worth it to try the Visual Novel approach just to see the reaction. Please let me know what you thought of this, as this has the potential to change the entire game feel going forward. I'll follow up with a Poll about this tomorrow.

There is a problem with the AI. It will 100% break the game if you venture out of the typical playthrough. For example, when Dexter's Mom says she's "going to shower" - and you immediately run away and run into the house before she has a chance to make it inside, the game will break. The same thing happens when she's at the bake sale. If you run home before she makes it home, which is very easy to do at that point in the game, then the game logic will break.

I'm going to have to fix this - which is not a small problem. I'll explain it later this week when I talk about the weekly development. 

So for now, be very careful with the game, and try to do things as if you were following a script. Not the intended open world experience I envisioned, so I will be changing that.

Again, thank you all for your amazing comments and appreciation for this work. There's a lot coming down the pipeline and I hope I've gained your trust by sticking to the project. 

Next post will be a weekly poll.

Love you guys!