It's the "Bollocks. Sorry. " update...

Hi guys,

One day I'll start a post without an apology. God knows when, but the odds have to play out sometime, right? But since today isn't that day....let's begin.

Chapter Two

So despite a rather desperate Sunday last week re-creating the code I'd accidently overwrote, a couple of fairly serious bugs slipped through. I hadn't realised quite how far back the version I'd copied into the release went. My sincere, and frankly cringeworthy, apologies for anyone who downloaded the version I popped up last week.

On reflection, kicking something out on the same day that you've been frantically crashing out a load of coding wasn't wise - and just reading that line alone makes me give a little sigh at my recklessness. My only excuse, and it's a damn poor one I know, was I'd done the work and wanted to show that releases would indeed be coming out thick and fast. The refresh is all very nice (and I do think essential), but both you and I want Chapter Five out of the door as soon as possible. I suspect a bit of desperation on my part.

So I've corrected the bugs and even found a few more whilst doing so (Christ on a bike...*), and have taken a load of the bloat out of the "full fat" version and also made a compressed version that comes out a respectable 500mb.

I'm sitting here now looking at the builds thinking "They -must- be right". But having pushed two refreshed chapters out both with bugs in, my confidence has taken a little knock I'll confess. 

As much as I hate to do this, I think I'd prefer to give them another once over. Perhaps even do a bit of a sneaky release to a couple of the guys on discord. In fact, now I write that, going forward that might be a sensible way to handle the next three chapters as well.

So, I'm going to take another couple of days and make sure that there's nothing wrong with either the "full fat" or compressed builds. When I put the builds up, there'll be the new "full fat", the compressed and a bug fix (around 1mb) for those who downloaded last weeks version.

Sorry. But I don't think I could stand to put something out else that was wonky. I want to be going "Yay! Look at this now!" and not hanging my head in despair at my own ineptitude.

Other news...

So I was bemoaning my fate to a good friend of mine, generally my knack for bollocking things up, lack of pace, etc. Now to a large extent the prolonged gestation of this project has been due to factors such as learning as I go, not having the kit at the start and trying to be Bioware circa 2012. 

But I have the kit now and, when paying bloody attention to what file I'm working on, I have the skills too. And it's all well and good (and fair) pausing patreon whilst I fumble around but that doesn't really get this game finished.

So he's offered to bring a dose of what I probably need most. Project discipline. He's an experienced project manager and we spent some time going through the various paths and content for the remaining chapters with a view to a project finish in 18 months (hey, if he's offering to help, may as well make the most of it!) and...it seemed feasible. It would require one major path cut, but since you guys don't know about that one yet and would probably reload and go another way after it anyway it's a loss we can stand, I think. It also means that it's an end to any design faffing etc. It also means I have to stick to what I have planned and not suddenly go, and I often do, "Oh! I could add a bit here!".

On the other hand, it would get the game finished as quickly as possible. Given I already have the second game gestating away, I think it's what they call a "no-brainer". So, I'm in harness a bit. The disciplined artist no less.

And that's it for now. Sorry, it's not better news. They'll be another post in a couple of days.

Stay lucky.

Notty

* The Chapter Code that went out must have been from all the way back in March at a guess. In copying the coding file from one machine to another at some point (I'm working on all three machines at the same time) I must have transferred an old back up instead of the version I'd just finished working on. Once, I'd edited that file for a single line it'd have had a current date and was no longer visible as an old file.