IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT! (Patreon)

Note: This is not the special Game dev update post planned for Barbwire as a tier III reward. This will come later. This is a more general announcement for everyone regarding important changes and decisions regarding game development and also how I deliver Images set from now on.



Hello everyone,

so there have been a lot things happening behind the scenes, things I wanted to share, changes that I will gradually put in places and many are in fact good news. I decided to lay all out in a single post for simplicity. Note that this mainly concerns my Game development side of things, but also involves some changes on how I approach and deliver images sets in the future.

Here goes.





- BIG PERFORMANCES IMPROVEMENTS COMING TO ALL CURRENT GAMES -

If you already played any of my games, you know about the sudden loss of frame rates that can occur when you switch maps, trigger an event, or combat. Leaving you no choice but to close and restart the game.

I'm happy to announce that the source of this issue, which was baked in the RPG MAKER MV engine itself for years, has finally be resolved with the help of my good friend and fellow artist Scriptor.  

With this change, you should (If all goes well), never experience sudden frame drops anymore. I've tested the change and so far managed 4-5 playthroughs without frames randomly dropping.

Another fix is the sudden "Freezed" screen issue that could occur. This also should almost never happen now.

In addition, those of you with older machines should in theory get a good performance boost with these changes.

So to summarize:

         - Random occurrences of frame rates dropping should be a thing of the past.

         - Cases of screen Freezes should drastically reduce.

         - An overall increase of game performance should be felt (specially with older rigs)

These improvements will apply to both 3072 AD and No Escape reality updates from now on, and it is highly recommended you download the new versions coming soon to make sure the effects apply.






- RPG MAKER MV AND MAC COMPATIBILITY ISSUES -

For some time now, MAC users have had issues running the games on MAC OS systems. This is unfortunately out of my hands, as this is a compatibility issue baked in with the RPG MAKER engine and the lack of support of 32 bit software on the latest MAC OS builds.

The devs of RPG maker finally made an announcement about it (really late) and made it clear that they will no longer support RPG MAKER MV to fix the issue on MAC .

You can find their official response here:

https://www.rpgmakerweb.com/blog/regarding-future-rpg-maker-mv-macos-support

There is the possibility that the performance changes I'll make in the next patches may fix this issue, but it may very well not. I will try ONE last time to deploy a MAC version on the next update to see if MAC users can play it with the changes I made. But again, it may very well still not work.

I understand this is a pain for Mac users and believe me, I don't like it either. But, its out of my hands. And it's the reason I'm now learning to code on a different engine: UNITY. Witch leads me to...






- LEARNING TO CODE ON UNITY -

RPG Maker has been a GREAT starting point for me to learn and improve about making games without ANY prior knowledge.

That said, the engine has its limits and issues. And I feel like I'm reaching the limit of what the software can allow me to do.

I wish to pursue my game Dev skills even further and make it my main content one day (Don't worry I'm still sticking to the current image set/ Game dev mix for now, but eventually I might want to focus more and more on games)

Transitioning to UNITY seems like the next natural step for me. It's the most popular engine out there, accessible, used by many indy devs and LOTS of tutorials and community support.

That said, don't expect this to happen overnight. I still have to learn a lot about the C# language and the general tools of the engine. And I won't be transitioning until I feel I can make a full game with it.

That said, I am planning on trying to make my FINDOM game: Squeal little piggy on UNITY. For the simple reason that it's a simple game (No combat, mostly dialog and requires custom UI tools). If that doesn't work out right away though, I'll go back to using RPG maker to make the game to make sure its dev time doesn't take too long. We will see.

Note: My games made on RPG maker will not be converted to UNITY. It's not that simple. So 3072 AD will keep being made on RPG maker MV until its completion no matter what.





- MY VISION FOR FUTUR GAMES ON PATREON -

I started making games as a "Side" thing at first to my regular image sets.  Since I was still learning and didn't feel like I could commit to it yet, I kept it that way.

But now, I feel more comfortable with it. Able to explore different things and improve the quality of my games greatly over time. I think there is a bright future pushing my content more in that direction going forward. Eventually, I might focus on that (almost) entirely (Not soon though).

This is clearly a path I want to pursue further. Don't expect any sudden drastic changes though, but I'm going to slowly shift my focus in this direction.

That said, up until now my "Work schedule" has been most 75% of my work time on image sets (The VERY long story sets take a LOT of time to make) and 25% on games. The reason being, that Image sets are tied to a VERY tight schedule and so even when I'm on a good roll to get a new patch done, I may have to put a pause on that just to make sure I get that image set out in time.

I want to bring my time allocation to a more 50/50 split between game dev/side content and image sets. With that in mind, I'm going to make a "slight" changes to how I deliver and approach image sets going forward.






- ADAPTING THE WAY I DELIVER IMAGE SETS INTO YOUR HANDS -

As I explained, the way I have to deliver image sets (Without sacrificing their size, and quality)  on a tight "Base color one month and Finished story and shading next month" hinders my flexibility to evenly distribute my work schedule between Image sets / Game Dev / Side projects. As the "Delivery on time" nature of image sets are a big headache for me (And frankly, it can be VERY stressful meeting the deadline).

So here is my solution: Rather then making the sets much smaller, less quality. I may "Sometimes" split the final delivery of the story into TWO chapters (splitting it in two) IF the story set ends up being very long (More then 120 pages in total).  So, I would still take ONE month to do ALL the base color images. Then I'll begin work on shading and story on the following month. If the story set is not too big, I might finish and deliver the entire set that same month (Same as usual). However If I have a story that is REALLY big (Say 170 pages long). Then I might split and spread the work load and delivery in two.
Finishing a first chapter and delivering for you to enjoy on that second month and finishing up the second part and delivering it on the next one.

Mind you, I'm not aiming to do this all the time, just when I feel that the set is so long that it will eat ALL my available time just to make sure it's done in time!

I think I have to do this to allow me more time on game dev and side projects and more importantly to manage my stress because the tight delivery schedule has been impacting me a bit.

I think this will work just fine, as you guys will still get a good flow of content as you would expect, just allow me to spread it a bit to make my work schedule more flexible and less stressful. The Shego set is going to be about 200 or pages long (it will be a great set), but that forced me to focus on it for three weeks on it full time (Just one week on game dev and side projects) and with a LOT of overwork and stress to finish it in time. I don't think that's healthy and it certainly bumps me out that I had to slow down game dev as a result (Still have a patch for No escape though :) ).

So hope you guys will understand why I'm making this change. When it comes to flow of content going your way, it's not a bad thing at all. You'll still get plenty each month as usual. But I need more flexibility in how I deliver image set. Allowing me to give you a "Part 1" one month  Then "part2" the next month will help me greatly.

Note: This will not apply to the Shego set though, but any future sets that end up being REALLY big.




That is all folks, I know this was a long read. And I apologies for any grammatical errors and typos. But I hope you found both exciting and informative on things to come.

Regards,

Tonk.