I'm alive and regaining sanity (Patreon)

Hey people I'm alive. I got back to Austin a few weeks ago after a very shitty week+ in Amarillo. I have been trying to figure out how to write this up...but it'd probably be easier for me to just say it plain. SP is killing me. I dread working on it. I hate the amount of spaghetti code I've made in it. Working on it is a serious pain in the ass, the ephasis of the game is a nightmare for me, since it requires a lot of writing(something I find very draining), and feature creep has made creating a new character a monumental effort. These are all issues that new Devs face...but new Devs eventually start new projects with much fewer of these problems. I've been roughing this out for probably 2 years longer than I should have.  Now...I want to be clear...I didn't do all this world building just to fuck off. I still love night city and the SuperPowered world....I'm just done fighting with the mess that is SP. And a lot of this has to do with Ren'py.

I've come to loathe Ren'py as a gaming engine. It's great for VN's, but it is not suited for what I want it to do. The game is ugly and clunky, the images are too small and pretty desturated due the process I have to run them through to reduce thier size, and modifying the UI in anyway is a goddamn nightmare for me. Some people are good with co-ordinate based UI work. I am not. I need a visual editor. For 2 weeks before I left, I'd been in a state of writer paralysis....And a huge part of it is just how much I'm burned out with this game, and how much of it is due to structural problems. Granted those structural problems I made...but I did make them years ago when I had no clue what I was doing. The game is so big at this point Refactoring it would take longer than just starting over. So...I've decided to Start over. Not completely though.

I plan to make an SP2 in Unity. Sorry for all you Ren'py fans. I'm not completely ditching the Ren'py version either. I'll still be leaving it open for people to add to, and I'll still be adding some content to it from time to time to make the transition from one game to the other a little smoother. I will be figureing out a way to transfer your progress from SP1 over. This is something I have to do. I started tinkering with the idea last month when I started working on Gen8 versions of Maggie, and it's just been festering the entire time I've been struggeling to write. It's nothing but torture to try to write decent dialogue for something you have absolutely no inspiration in. I've just made the characters too manditorily complex, which has really burned out my creativity for the project. Making every character have all these  intricate and distinct interactions is great...but making them required to creating a character....is draining. There's something to the effect of 12 base states for every character, with that number being multiplied for some characters. It's just too much writing/rendering/and coding. I need to cut those manditory base states down to like 5 or 6, and then add in the intricacies in other ways. I also need to put more emphasis on game and less on writing. Loser is a pretty good model for me in this aspect. I made SP very narrative driven in part because when I started, It took me 6 hours to render an image, so I tried to compensate for the low image count, with dialogue. I don't really need to do that anymore, but it's built into the structure of the characters now. So yeah....I'm gonna be working on a streamlined SP2 in unity. I'm gonna be focusing more on the Superhero/villain stuff, and adding in the support cast as I go. I will continue to work in the Ren'py version for a while to finish what's already in the game, but I don't plan to go much further beyond where we are now in terms of story.

 I had to stop working on the  Ren'py version for a bit, just to get over this block I have with it currently, So I've started development on Loser. I will be putting out one more Ren'py SP update in the nearish future, but I'm not pushing myself to insanity anymore over that game, so it's taking a backseat to Loser, SP2, and my own sanity. I hope you all can understand. Bit I am also sympathetic if you don't.

Anywho...Let's stasrt this year off right shall we!

Loser:

I've been working on Loser for about a week, and here's what I've gotten done so far. 

Introduction Scene

New Downtown Location: Boutique

New Job: Cashier

Temporary Reputation Modifiers

Purchaseable/Giftable outfits for characters (these are scene specific. Don't expect everything to be rerendered just for a new outfit.)

New Location: Stripclub

I'll begin working on Diane just a bit later tonight. And tomorrow I'll be doing my end of month stream. So here's what the future looks like for. I'll work on Loser through January, and release near the end of Febuary. During that Time, I'll be working on A new AT for Diane, Becky, Gina, Jesse, Tilley(probably), and a second AT for Diane(if time permits).

Once Loser's done, I'll be focusing full time on SP2. I expect to have a working Tech Demo out within 2 weeks and hopefully have the 0.01.00 finished by the end of the first dev Cycle.

So yeah 

TLDR- SP1 has ran it's course. SP2 is on the way. Loser is already in Dev. End of Month Stream this weekend.