v0.14 Development Poll Results
Okay, v0.14 Development Poll is closed, and the Patrons have spoken - next up is the Beckett Estate. I guess if I wanted Beckett to have a fair shot, I should've mentioned the new girls sooner. He went from barely getting any votes to winning nearly 2 to 1.
Or maybe that's just because the murder mystery isn't an option anymore.
Either way, v0.14 will be diving into Phoebe's past, as well as the bottom of several bottles. I'm looking forward to writing this; rather than doing things different mechanically, I get to try some new things narratively.
In addition to v0.14's Estate being decided, since there are only two options left, that also means v0.15 is decided, and the "introductions" portion of Act 2 will conclude with the Stebbing Estate and a whole lot of combat. That means you may not see much in the way of development polls for a while.
Unless I decide to try to rework the love shack a bit, but that's a post for another day.
In other news, for anyone that read this post on the dev blog, I've got good news and bad news. The bad news is that I won't be posting the demo for Patrons today. The good news is that I had several breakthroughs in getting the mechanics to work. Everything seems to function as intended, and while there is a little bit of jank due to making RPG Maker do things it isn't built to do, I was able to get about 90% of the way to what I envisioned. It'll likely take another day or two to get the bare minimum done, and another few days for testing, and another few days just to be safe. I'm hoping that means I'll have the demo done for next week and development on that won't cut into development on Maids & Masters much, but only time will tell at this point.
Comments (2)
"eventually an idea crystalizes and I turn it into something. But recently, all these disparate ideas haven't been doing much. Just bouncing around in my skull, making me wish I had the time and resources to be able to do something with them. Then a roommate put an idea in my head, and a new idea crystalized." Creative juices go through phases. Good phases and bad phases, high phases and low phases. Sometimes they flow well and other times they don't. This frequently happens to me, I can relate. I read your blog post and at any rate, it seems like you're always feeling overworked and mentally stressed, based on multiple posts over time, you should take a break.... if you can. There's definitely room to take extra time off, but I also get it if you can't help it (it can be hard to make yourself stop even when you try). I also get it, the excitement on wanting to use certain ideas while feeling frustrated that you currently can't. I also get it that too many ideas at once = brain overload, slows you down. My own brain is overloaded today too, forgive me for the jumbled nature of my words... You seem like you might be afraid of untimely releases of M&M, too. I should tell you then that you've been doing a really good job on releasing timely updates - many others tease stuff for months, say they'll have it ready in april and still haven't released it by November and counting (many are similar to this as an example, but the exact months I said are about a particular case). You most certainly have room to take more time off and slow down here - and as far as health is concerned, take as much time as you need. Health comes first. Many also are too afraid to admit to problems such as these so instead they just keep promising to do things, string people along with repeated delays and no honesty. Your honesty is a good thing because the world really needs to #endthestigmaofmentalhealth! And don't forget that in the end, your health comes first. Don't be afraid to disappoint people - good people will understand, and bad people, well they *deserve* to be disapppointed, both on behalf of the good people and on behalf of yourself.
I appreciate the concern, but despite constantly overworking myself (and having been especially worn out when I wrote that blog post) I do have something of a system. I have days that I have designated to spend with friends and try to not work. Making demos like Saccharine Soil (and Redemption Harem and Love/Loss) stop me from getting muscle cramps in my brain. Brain cramps? Brain cramps. Honestly my biggest issue is loving doing this as a job so much. Having fun and working get blurred together, so even if I do step away to do something else, I actively want to get back to work. As far as timely releases go, the fact of the matter is that I have slowed down. For good reason - updates are longer and significantly more complex than they used to be - but I used to release an update every two weeks, and this last one took closer to two months. While I have no intention of going back to working 100 hour weeks to get back to that old cadence, I do want to hold myself to monthly releases. Mostly as a point of pride, but also in wanting to complete MnM (hopefully before the end of 2024) so I can start on my next solo project. I've got too many games to make and stories to tell to be content sitting idle.