Friday Rambles and Game Dev Update 2024-12-06

It's the Saturday Friday Ramble.

Real Life Stuff:

I got sick with a cold again, but nothing too severe. Just a cough. Must be something going around. Hopefully I'll be fully over it before I leave for a trip mid next week.

Merch Stuff:

I sent out Black Friday orders. Lots of orders to pack. Whew.

Game Dev Stuff:

Now this is what I focused most of my working hours on. Due to real life I'm not able to freely work a lot of overtime like I used to be able to do, but I got a lot of hours in.

I wrote thousands and thousands of words, and completed 99.9% of the script, with just part of the epilogue remaining. I was unfortunately not able to send the script file to translators yet like I hoped this week, because (on top of needing to actually finish the content) I need to prepare files formatted for localization, and write notes for lines that will probably need clarification and stuff. So I'll try to do all that by Monday. But I did give them a heads up so we can schedule the work.

Why's this taking so long? It's because there's lots of stuff that aren't just words, like todo list logic, flags, special code, flavor texts, etc etc etc that I needed to write to finish the last 5%. Fixing continuity errors when hitting some flag before another, things like that. And a deeper issue of editing. But maybe the roughness is okay, considering I said the exact same thing right before Dreams and Deadlines release, lamenting that it was just a first draft that I didn't have time to edit, and then I realized it's just fine the way it was.

I'll probably also do a few more playthroughs this weekend if I can pull myself away from real life so I can do some editing and revisions before sending out the script. I did two playthroughs for this version of the script, one for the normal ending and one for the Screwed This Up ending. I actually really love the Screwed This Up ending. I think it's perfect. I still need to massage the normal ending a little bit.

I've been posting about this new content update for like, a year. It's undergone so many different iterations and I've read it all so many times that I fear I can't trust my own judgement about it anymore. All I can hope is that the new update captures what people liked about the original.

It's easy to be like "who cares, it's free" but I also have to consider the integrity of the story itself. Which was pretty fairly self contained and had a nice ending that tied everything together, that the new update might undermine or something. I mean, personally I don't think so. I guess that's all that matters... But then again, people might find me out for the hack fraud I am, instead of the cool guy who made the cool story.

The final word count ends up being almost exactly the same as Dreams and Deadlines. I hacked off another large part of the script that was going to add too much time to implement fully, but I might add it back in a future update. Or not. I kind of miss it but it would really have taken way too long to implement. If I have time during the localization period, maybe I'll add it back.

The End

Almost done!! Monday's gonna be my last work day, which I'll be spending on doing last minute editing and making localization files and notes. The rest of the week, I'll be busy with real life, mostly. I have a trip and stuff. I'm going to take my Switch and play finally play 13 Sentinels. Anyway, thanks for your support, as always. See you next week!