Working on v0.45 [Part 3]

Well... It seems that I was a bit too optimistic about schedule. I planned v0.49 with 9 events but due to my IRL work and writing block i have to reduce it to 5 or 6 depending on how much I will be able to finish till Friday 22th

This also necessities version change from v0.49 to v0.45.

I think with this ambitious plan, I learned my limits. I worked whole days from early morning till late night to meet the schedule. Previously, when I made a prologue, it used to take me few days between each event, which gave me a lot of room to experiment with dialogue and scenes. It was stress-free and I took joy in making those.

With the schedule for version 0.49, I noticed that I was too stressed trying to ensure all chapters were completed by Friday, March 22nd, as opposed to enjoying the work like before. The final catalyst for this change occurred when I started working on one scene and began considering reducing the scope of one event because otherwise the Friday release would be jeopardized. It started to feel like a chore rather than a joyful creation that was mostly meant to prove something to myself and provide you with something enjoyable to play.

The other part of it was writer's block, which I mentioned. You see, it's one thing to plan a rough design ("this character does that; this looks bad to another character; character C makes a counterargument, etc.") and actually writing dialogue, prose, details, etc. For the past few days, I realized that my goal to join together branches that started to separate with the mistress kiss event was failing. Not in the sense that I couldn't write it but that I couldn't write it convincingly enough to avoid ludonarrative dissonance. In my opinion, when it comes to writing characters and story, it is super important not to break the character logic. This separates imho good games from bad ones. In first you treat those assets and models as characters in second you treat them as 3d model with some gameplay attached. Shrek isn't real, it is a 3D model and yet what Disney did with that model makes you not think about it as some 3d model but character and my job is to properly convey those characters logic

Ideas often benefit from more time in the oven - not necessarily in the literal sense where I need to write more, but rather allowing them to percolate over time. This might mean sleeping on an idea and revisiting it the next day or writing something initially and then completely revising it later. The iterative process is crucial for delivering quality results.

Now that we have this stuff out of the way... After v0.45 release I will take a 2 week break. But due to my extra work on other chapters i tried to deliver in upcoming update I think that the 12th of April schedule for next update is reasonable.

TLDR:
- v0.45 will be released 22nd of March, Friday
- It will have 5-6 events instead of 9
- next update after that should come the 12th of April