It's the "Oh hai Thea" update...

Hi guys.

Apologies for the late post this month. I confess I was expecting to make this about two weeks ago but it's been a busier month than expected.

First off, where are we? Well, Chapter Three is all prepped and updated and bar a final run through tomorrow from me can go for testing. Although, having missed the weekend, it would be unfair of me to expect the testers to turn this around quickly. That said we might squeak it out before the end of the month but we'll see. Charging of course remains off until Five is ready to ship so not quite the disaster it could be but frustrating nonetheless, I know.

Also, the Strip Ping Pong is ready as well. So that's something. Again, I just need a final test of it at this stage to ensure that the end game animations etc are worth the candle.

So why the busy month?

There was a bit of unexpected real world interference this month workwise which probably cost me a week more or less. But that's by the by. Project wise it was busy from three directions. The first was down to getting my head around the old (and different from Chapter Two) code for the GUI upgrade. Nothing exciting really, more just a slog as I had to code things slightly differently to get the same effect*.

The second was having to upgrade some of the older graphics and animations. Again nothing exciting just more of a quality issue in that some work was unexpectedly poor. One of the "downers" at looking at your old stuff is realising just how awful some of it used to be. Of course, it also shows how much I've improved as I've no doubt whatever I put out before probably was the best I could do at the time, but it's still a bit cringey to look at some of them and go "I shipped that?". Still, that's what alcohol is for, no?

The final, and biggie, was scratching my head over the changes to Chapter Six. My original concept for a chunk of Chapter Six is no more. It was effectively a dead (but valid storyline) end, and one that would have taken thousands of renders to do**. Given it's a dead end and the player is very unlikely to go "Well, that was my story. Time to take up golf." it's not an effective use of resources, especially when you consider that some players wouldn't even go down one of those paths or would just wind back after playing it and continue down a different track.*** Now, this edit doesn't effect the main storyline or existing paths at all. It was effectively a sidebar path but one that was set up in Chapter Five.

So there's been a fair bit of writing wrestling in trying to work out how to roll back this set up. It wasn't quite as simple as just deleting the appropriate bits of the chapter as the sidebar came out of logical behaviours from the characters and yet the characters still had to behave logically without this path cropping up. (I loathe it when characters in films etc start behaving out of character just make to the plot happen in the way the writer wants it to) Ultimately, Annie (bless her) came to the rescue. So, I've nixed the path, saved a heap of time down the line and everyone still behaves as you'd expect them to.

Well, that's all well and good but why do it now? The honest answer is that it was bothering me. Five was looming up and I had no idea how, or if I could, fix it. It was simply on my mind all the time, hence why I had to do it now I felt. Sorry. Insecure writers are insecure, I guess?

Anyhoo, Onwards, onwards. I'll be dropping something this coming weekend, whether it will be Ping Pong, Chapter Three or both we'll have to see.

As always, charging is off until Five comes out and we're back to normal.

Stay, or become, lucky.

Notty

*For example, for some reason the code for moving around in Three was backwards to that in Two...No. I don't know why either.

** I'm talking four blocks of at least 5 to 8 thousand renders each...

*** Post Six I'll explain what I cut out.