Development Update 32
A Foreign World is way too fucking long.
I love it and I'm here for it (same as you), but I'm at a point where I have to rethink some of my strategies.
For example, whenever I'm uncertain on how to progress the story, or I lack inspiration for the renders, I tell renpy to extract the dialogue, and I listen to the whole thing from start to finish. That's almost nine fucking hours!
It's good because it helps me keep the story coherent, but nine hours are way too much to listen to for someone that curently doesn't have that much time anyway. I'm probably going to stop doing that for a while. Tell me if you notice a difference in writing.
Also my family is starting to ask the hard questions. Last week someone I'm close with told me that they don't expect me to finish my degree this semester. I took it as a personal challenge. So, last week the plan was that I allocate some of the resources I use on the game to the resources I use on my studies. In that case, I would use this dev update to make a confession and tell you that updates will be sparse the next three months.
But then today I was asked when my game is going to be finsihed with the implications that I wouldn't be able to live from making games in the future. Same thing. I took it as a personal challenge, and now I want to prove that I can in fact make decent money creating these games.
So, this isn't really a confession. It's basically my way of letting you know that I'm going to have a couple of challenging months ahead of me where I'm going to both study hard, and create games.
But enough about me for one dev update. I've been creating renders. I'll keep creating renders. I had some animations planed for the next update, but I'm quite sure that I'll cut them. I hope you're all doing well.
Keep your eyes open for future updates.
Until then, Enjoy!
Comments (3)
here's an advice from an old friend: do NOT chase 2 hard lines and mess them both up. allocate time for each (1 day/week/month) if you do plan on doing both but NEVER try to do both at the same time. make a plan and stick to it, making sure you take into account to at least add some time for unplanned events. always stick to the plan you've made, as much as possible. having a clear separation between the two will keep you from going crazy or burning out... or both. and take your time. while i can clearly say that studies in the end are not that important, the social connections you make during your studies (class-mates, professors, game/coding jams) matter more than one could imagine.
As someone who has multiple degrees, I will tell you I do not regret any education I have ever gotten. As much as I love this game, the degree should be you're priority (being selfish this was hard to write 🙄). The second thing is, to start out you need more tiers if you want to do this as a living. The jump from $6 to $29 is just too much. I want to give you more, but I cannot unless I cut off the other 26 dev's I support. You also should plan for steam. There are dev's making $1,000,000 per year (or more) on steam. That should at least buy a few coffees 😄.
Don't burn yourself out. Your mental health is important. I've been supporting indi devs for a while now. Some burn out and don't finish there games. I really like this one it's a great read and you been doing absolutely fantastic with it. It's in my favorites list on steam. I tell everyone I can about it. But take care of yourself first. Your as important as the game.👍