A refocused new start while Cat/Suit gets fixed (Patreon)

First! Platformer things and assets! I've been working the last few days to get a build of it done but it needs more time and bits and bobs to look good. Its been overdue that I gave everyone an update. More than about time I did an update post, really. I apologize about the wait and especially the silence on things. There are reasons, of which I'll get into below. But first! Answering important questions about Cat/Suit and what I'm making, and why its taking so long to play what I'm making.

The short of Cat/Suit taking so long is that I want the builds of it to look good and be well written, to not be janky and to be enjoyable as a gameplay and narrative. With the very first demo of the RPG maker game to the very first demo of the Unity Game, I care SO MUCH about the quality of it that I sacrifice any amount of personal time to make sure things are good.

So. What I'm still stuck on, and why nothing's gotten uploaded to test/play. 

It comes down to two parts, programming and time equaling money.

The programming problem. 

The save and load function half works, the inventory system kinda works, and all those bugs I hoped I could iron out after I just rushed to keep getting a build up every month are kind of fixed. But its not quality yet, and I have very little time to just sit and work on it. It comes down to finances, and how much time I can dedicate to things. Even if I could make an infinite number of quality assets to go into the game, I'm not a programmer, nor (I have discovered) do I have any talent for it. 

I'm an artist and a creative with a talent to infinitely create. But I have forced myself to adapt to try and fix and make this game and my ideas a reality. Since making my call out and searching for a programmer who could lend me a hand, there's one person who is still trying to help (the only one, more on that in the next bit). Though their advice recently has just been to have me switch everything over to gamemaker studio. I may do that, if its the only alternative open to me.

Right. About getting help. SEVERAL people on various platforms stepped up and claimed they can and want to help after I've made attempts and reached out for aid. Then nothing. It happened about five times. Each time with me showing scripts and ideas and chatting about what I was trying to make, and them saying they'd take a look and get back to me, and then nothing. So here I am still, chugging alone working on my dreams and ideas. There is that one person, but again their advice is 'Switch to Gamemaker Studio'. Which constituted starting over, or there about. I may just have to do that, but I'm reading about saving/loading functions in Gamemaker first before I commit.

The second part is that time equaling money thing. I just don't have enough wiggle room financially to breath, let alone not take commission work and focus several weeks straight on game development. I put in time where I can when I can, but can't afford those 36 hour 'days' I did before when I started doing this stuff. It kills my health, for one thing. I'm constantly clawing at debt or worrying about groceries or bills or (in this new case, my electric bill being massively overdue) and I have to take a bunch of commission work just to keep afloat. If I could make at least half of my necessary monthly income through patreon, I'd not be under nearly as much stress, but as is sacrificing that very necessary 'Do work to pay bills' time to work on exclusively game development can't be balanced easily. I absolutely work on Cat/Suit and other game ideas when I can, but since I can't work on them exclusively, they take time to make.

That brings me to the stuff posted here, and what I'm working on. 

What I've realized is that Cat/Suit and the fictional world I want to build is still viable, but the way I deliver it needs to shift. Still in a game, but with a platformer. Its easier to build a platformer, vastly easier. I don't need outside help for it, just good quality assets. Which I can make a ton of. I can work on it between commissions and in my downtime. I can tell a story in chapters and build up a giant platformer with a complex world to get invested in with interesting locations and detailed deep lore. 

So Cat/Suit V3 will be out just as soon as its ready. Still having Stray, all the other characters, though now there's a very cyberpunk element to it and a giant city in a volcano to explore in it. Its currently "playable" but I use quotations because its barely a handful of scattered game maps with one or two character interactions.

Cheers!