Overall, I’d say things are going well right now! I do wish I was getting things done faster, but that’s always going to be true. The important thing is that I’ve kept working pretty steadily, and I’ve been getting better at minimizing downtime, making sure to take care of myself emotionally and not try to overwork myself. Development for the prototype of Project Wild One has been immensely challenging, but it’s mainly been challenges I expected, and most of it I’ve enjoyed, even when it brought things grinding to halt for a day or two.
The more I’ve been working on the math behind Project Wild One, and the harder it’s gotten to get things just right, the more I can’t help but imagine that if I tried to explain what I was working on to anyone else, they’d just ask, “why are you even bothering to go to all that trouble for that?” And… in a way, that’d be a fair question? But it’s also one that I think is pretty important to the whole “point” of this Project, so the more I thought about it, the more I felt like this would actually be a good time to explain some of that.
Supporters got a taste of this two weeks or even a month early, but my first prototype for a post-MVOL…
With the new release sequence, I’m not sure how best to handle announcing each new version I put out there. It used to be that I’d give high-level supporters a very bare bones explanation when they got the MMU two weeks ahead of the proper release, and I’d still be adding a lot of finishing touches up until the actual full release today. I felt kinda bad about giving them all this new content with so few specifics, takes some of the fun out of having early access I expect.
You know, it was a funny thing. I’ve been letting these journals slide over to the long side of “one to two weeks apart” between the public and supporter alternations, but after I updated everyone on the Patreon and SubStar last week, I actually felt like writing another one only two days later! I finally had what I felt like was some pretty good news and I wanted to share it. But I figured it’d be a little silly to just jump out with it on the spot, it’d be better to give it some time and let more things accrue so I’m pacing them out at least a bit.
Well, shoot. I’ve definitely let these journals space out more than I’d intended. I’ve put it on my to-do list to update with you guys maybe a dozen times now, but… well, it went the same way as a lot of things on my to-do list from day to day. Often I’d tell myself, “today’s the day I’ll get back into it properly, and once I have some good news, once things are back on track, I’ll post a dev journal about it!” And… instead of jumping back into it, I’ve kinda been crawling back into it.
Alright! I’ve pledged to keep more in touch with you guys to talk about how development is going, and the…
On January 28th, 2012, after a month of frantic work relearning how to program, I uploaded a very basic, cobbled together v0.01. Looking over that page, it was apparently an incredibly buggy mess, but also got a strong reaction from a lot of people. After that, I worked on the game in my spare time, releasing very slowly, but people asked for ways to support the game, so I opened a Paypal. Eventually they suggested a Patreon, so I opened one of those, and this… very gradually turned into a living for me.
In case you don’t know what’s going on, I’ve been talking a bunch about how MVOL has gone and what comes next! You can get more info on all that here! I held a big series of surveys after talking it over, then compiled all the results and talked about those, and now it’s finally time to take all of that and jump into action! July is a big month for me as a game designer! My Very Own Lith v1.00 is coming out tomorrow, and I’ll finally take that momentous step into being an adult game designer with a finished game in my portfolio, which is surely a small and prestigious group, from what I’ve seen. But that also means it’ll finally be time to get serious about my projects beyond MVOL, and that, in turn, means it’s time to start making a lot of changes!
I tackled the bulk of the big surveys I rolled out in the last few months covering MVOL and how I should build my future projects in the last post, and today it’s time to go over the results for the last survey, then talk about some of the write-in feedback I’ve gotten! I’ve learned a lot of important things from these surveys and I’m really happy with how they’ve turned out overall. It’s been a ton of work, but I do want to do more of these in the future to make sure I’m staying in touch with you guys! Let’s get started!