Dev Journal: Looking Back on the Third Year of Development

Wow, three years... It's hard to believe it's already been three years since VT's development started. I can't thank you all enough for giving me this opportunity, not to get too sappy over an adult game but it has genuinely been life changing.

As usual, I'll be doing a post talking a bit about development and issues I've had over the last year. These posts are usually long and kind of boring, so if that's not your thing, feel free to skip this one!

This year has been amazing in some ways and pretty mediocre in others. The standout to me is of course my art improvement, which I am still very excited about but which I'm leaving on hold to get the game going, but we also had Venus Derby starting- a new vore game from hmal which I am just helping with game design on, the game's code has been greatly improved, and behind the scenes we've got a bunch of new designs and the story/world has been reworked with help from the team to be much better.

The game also has a new artist, Bubble! We have a new as-of-yet-unnamed writer who has done an awesome job on the difficult task of writing the Chimera, and I am now working with and exchanging advice with another dev, hmal, which has been very helpful. Don and Antares, in addition to the incredible work they've been doing on the game, have also released some amazing mods of their own that I highly suggest you check out on the Discord.

At the same time, I think there hasn't been any new content outside of outfits added since last November, over a year ago. I'll be honest, I'm not too happy about that. They may not be the focus right now, but characters don't take that much time to add so I do wish I had made a greater effort to get some in. I know you all have been incredibly patient, so hopefully I can pay you back for that next year by adding some new units you'll really love.

There is one issue I don't think I can avoid addressing today: if and when VT's updates will speed up, after all they've been pretty stagnant this year. And my honest answer to that is: I don't know. I'm doing my best, but my best right now is what you see. The project's development is slower than it should be.

The reason for its slow speed is not a clear obstacle nor is it something that is easy to solve. It's not a lack of time or funding or interest, the work itself is pretty easy and I am definitely qualified to do it at this point. The truth is, I'm just not good enough at self-management. And by that, I don't mean that I'm lacking motivation or that the work is such a pain that I have to force myself to do it, I think the best way to put it would be that I just suck at managing my needs.

I wish that was something they taught you in school, but either way I'm learning now. I am confident that I would not have the same issues if I were working with other people every day, but I guess that's part of why being a solo dev is tough. There's so much in the way of structure, rewards, consequences, etc. that you just don't have. And, as much as I don't want to blame it on this, I think a lot of it is all just down to the fact that I have ADHD.

I haven't talked about this here before because I actually really like the way my brain works and I don't want people to take it the wrong way. I've always been good at things in a way other people aren't, but I also just suck at a lot of things most people can do easily. Unfortunately, one of those is needing to manage myself. There are other issues too, like this hasn't been a great year in general and VT is still way too ambitious for its own good, but this is currently what I think is the biggest factor is.

To reiterate, work on VT has been as slow as it is mainly because of personal issues and not because of a lack of skill or time. There is a universe where I hit my groove and development increases in speed overnight, but right now I don't know how to get there . For now, all I can do is improve bit by bit. And I know I've said this before, but I am doing fine so don't feel like you need to support while development is slow. I want to earn your support!

And I do think I can do it. I remember in last year's post talking about how much of a negative effect my anxiety had on development, but that problem is mostly gone now. I want to be clear, I've talked about my ADHD a lot today, but it is not that bad in comparison. The effect of my anxiety was far, far worse in every way and I managed to beat it. I know it's not the same thing, but even if the methods I need to use are different I'm not going to give up until I can work the way I want to. Believe me, there's no one on Earth that wants to see VT succeed more than I do.

Anyway, this post is getting pretty long. Hopefully it was enlightening! As much as I don't want to just talk about my issues I think it's important that you all know what is going on and where we are at least. Thank you so much for reading this far and for supporting the game, I cannot tell you enough how much it means to me!