divinedawn
patreon
0.14 Retrospective and 0.15 Plans:
🕑 Added 2021-09-05 20:33:58 +0000 UTCAugust was the first time I've tried a monthly update, which had its ups and downs.
The good;
-I had the time to work on a number of things I usually don't. The massive upgrades to ability conditionals, scaling, and text is an obvious mention, same with the DoT mechanics rework.
-I also had more time to plan out and try different things without as short of a deadline.
-Not having to deal with updates every other week was really nice, fuck. Each release takes a LOT of time and stress to get sorted out and posted everywhere.
The bad;
-It's clear that I was a bit too optimistic on some of the planned content; I had a little over double the usual time, not 3x+, and hoped to get an unrealistic amount of content done.
-Not planning out the extra time very well led to some of it being wasted. While I was stuck on Ina's scene, I should have tried other stuff rather than ramming headfirst into that for so long.
-There just wasn't anything close to what I needed for Badon art, so I had to settle for some free-use stock photograph. Not happy about that.
The ugly;
-Getting stuck on Ina's scene for more than a week was pain peko. In general, I think I should have allotted more time to that, done it earlier in the month rather than later, and considered simplifying it a bit rather than having 3 nearly completely different routes AND several other inflection points for something people will only play once.
-Getting stuck on plot for so long also cut into my ability to actually do sexy stuff. While I'd like to think that's not the only appeal of the game, it's also some of my favorite stuff to write and a major part of the game, so I'm... pretty disappointed in myself there.
-0 visibility for the game and no growth between updates is not great, all other benefits aside I might have to go back to 2 weeks just so people know the game exists and I can get the growth to actually afford art, backgrounds, etc.
Thoughts;
It was an interesting experiment overall, I learned a lot. I'm not convinced monthly updates are the way to go, but they definitely have their advantages.
I'd like to try it again using the lessons from this month and see if I can make better use of the time, and this time maybe not have to work 10+ hours a day for the last week and still release late. At least it was, uh, less buggy than usual?
Thanks to Jaxoff in the discord, I may look into Trello and/or gantt charts to try to plan out releases more effectively, which might also make it easier to track development.
I also need to take at least short breaks between updates, fuck.
Looking forward;
My immediate plan is to take a few days off to recuperate, get emotes set up, and finalize the exact plans for what I'm doing this month. Possibly utilizing the trello/gantt stuff, depending on how easy they are to set up.
In general, the September update is likely to have a fair amount of sex battle content; new mechanics, statuses, win/loss scenes, probably Sarah/Ashley sex battles.
Also, Badon stuff, like more dates, equipment, and continuing the plot stuff, which also means potentially new girls. Not sure exactly how much of each will happen.
This time around I'm not stuck relying on super important plot scenes to be done, so a late September release seems like a safe-ish bet.
