It's the "What would Lola do?" update...

Hi guys,

First things first (which always seems a good order to put things in) you'll have noticed that May was paused as I've had a bit of delay in progress. It's been a sod of a month (April that is) and it started out so well.

Looking at what I had on at the start of April, I reckoned there was about three weeks work before I could start shipping releases, which meant that with a bit of effort on my part, I had a week to spare. And so, full of gleeful enthusiasm and sky high morale I started two other small projects to eat that week up.

Firstly there was a small standalone Easter game. It was nothing complex, on the same scale as the Christmas one really but I thought it would be a bit of a lark if nothing else and would give me a break from code re-writing. Plus, well it was Easter so...y'know.

No, I'm not sure about the loading screen either...

Secondly there was the "Epic Trailer". Most of you haven't seen very much of Five and I thought it'd be both neat and reassuring to pop together a trailer of some of the redux animations from One to Four and some non-spoilery ones from Five to give you a taste of what's coming.

Animated lens flare for the win!

Both were started and got pretty far but it was not to be. You'd think I'd learn by now.

Those that chat with me on discord or follow my twitter will be aware I've been running with a series of coughs and colds since the start of the year which needed a trip to the doctors at the back end of March. Armed with medicine to put me back on the road to health what could go wrong?

Well, the wrong antibiotics for as start...

Anyhoo, long story short*, I didn't get better and indeed got worse which ended up with me spending the next few weeks being looked after by a friend of mine at their house. So I spent a couple of weeks trying to not to move, talk or do anything much really. (If I moved, I coughed. If I talked, I coughed. If I coughed? I coughed...) Being at someone elses house (as well as feeling at deaths door generally) made comms a bit hard ("Please go get me my supah sekret smut computer" wasn't really something I wanted to have to ask...nor having to explain the four foot high poster of Sarah on the wall). Also, I get a bit squeeky bum-like if I post publicly without my (rather complicated) spoofy web address thingy.

So, sadly, it ended up a bit of a nothing month with the dials barely turning. Well, that's not entirely true now I think about it.**

I've got an Easter game for next year more or less done (bit silly putting it out now so I'll just sit on it especially given it's not finished), most of the "Epic Trailer" is there so that's not time wasted. I did add some more animations to Two and Three in respect of the engineering work and a big chunk of the additional combat moves needed for the new combat options for VR in Three were also done.  Whilst "abed" I also wrote most of Caverns and Creatures for Six and of course some more of the bonus strip ping pong merrily kept trundling out at the start of the month. I also stopped smoking so there's that as well? So not entirely nothing. Just not enough and not the right things.

So what's with the title of the post?

Lola Montez - and you thought Sarah was my spirit animal

"Courage and shuffle the cards". Or so she is supposed to have said. Hard to tell with Lola given what we do know for a fact about her is hard to believe in the first place. If you wrote it, readers would say it was impossible nonsense.

But any woman who manages to go from being a penniless stage dancer to the power behind the Bavarian throne - and a Countess to boot; being one of the causes of the revolutions of the 1848 that set Europe ablaze; causing numerous duels across Europe and being thrown out of Australia for being too scandalous (too scandalous for Australia?!) probably knew a bit or too about taking her destiny in her own hands and not bitching about it.*** Which is what I need to do right now I think.

I think I've gotten that used to rendering power being my stumbling block that it's been hard to shake that mentally. As we know, that is no longer an issue - so much so that I have power to spare, indeed almost more than I know what to do with. What is the blocker, especially at the moment as I re-wire things and need precision is time.

I'm aware that must sound laughable as the months whip by. But I mean more time during the week for me to work on it. A decent block rather than penny packets or what I can do on an evening or weekend. Rendering, writing and animating can be done quite easily in these sort of blocks but what I've been doing of late coding wise doesn't lend itself to it at all. Especially as H5 migrates more and more from a visual novel into something that feels much closer to a game (The code is eye-boggling)

What's done is excellent. A few of you have seen bits and bobs, and some of the animating (some, not all - let's be realistic) I'd put up against anyones, but it's taking too long. All it needs is something like last month and everything just stops. Alright, let's be fair, the re-wiring is a one off but even so this is a beast of a game and will continue to be so.

My patreon has been turned off for charging for over a year now as I've continued to throw time and money (car crash time excepting of course) at it, so I'm bleeding cash a bit - but I'm sticking to my pledge to not have charging on until Five comes out. But given the cash drain, the pressure to get the game out and hoping like hell you guys don't lose interest, what is a dev to do?

"Mon centre cède, ma droite recule, situation excellente, j'attaque."****

The sensible thing would be to scale it back down. Just accept that there are limitations to what I can do in the time available. Not have every sex scene require thousands of renders (tens of thousands in some cases), shrink the storyline, reduce some choices and cut some paths. But does that sound like me?

Instead I've gone to a four day week in the real world to get me that time. It's a bold solution. A gamble. A real world risk. But as the lady is supposed to have said, sometimes you have to shuffle the cards.

 So I have.

I'll be quite for the next couple of weeks as I sort a few things out in the real world and wrap some stuff up for the testers. We'll talk again then.

Notty

* I can't even be arsed to be angry with the NHS anymore. I'll just try leeches next time. They can't be worse and at least won't charge for the perscription. 

** You've probably noticed by now I just type these out as a stream of thought rather than as actual planned posts...

*** Apparently she also boffed quite a chunk of the great and the good. including Franz List, the composer - who she used to beat on the arse with a hair brush to help him keep in time...

**** "My centre is giving way, my right is retreating, excellent situation, I am attacking." Marshal Foch