Weekend Update

Greetings!

I moved into the new place Wednesday, spent all day yesterday unpacking, and now I'm settled in, finally. This past month has been really weird, but the weirdness is now over, thank God. This means that I'll be able to work on the game much more effectively, and it also means I'll be much more responsive - so you can expect more regular updates, comment responses, et cetera.

So, that's the good news. The bad news is that I will not have 0.6 out this month, contra my earlier promise. I have a good week's worth of work to do- maybe up to 1.5 weeks - before it'll be done. To let you know where the next release stands, I'll break it down:

• Renders: The renders for the H-scenes are done, but I'll be tweaking and re-rendering 2-3 of them. I'm finally able to do this now because my desktop is back up. I expect this will only take a few hours (minus the rendering time).
• Portraits: One of the features in 0.6 are conversation portraits for the Bunnies. I still need to design Ren, tweak Shiri and Jovi, and generate a good number of expressions for them. This isn't a huge job, but will probably take a day or two. I'd intended to do this during my sojourn, but it turns out that I didn't transfer a couple of files that I really needed to my laptop before I left the old place.
• Dungeon: The boss battle is as complete as I'm going to get it before the testing phase. Since my last update, I've created maps for about 50% of the levels, and I've planned out what I'll be doing for the remainder. I don't expect the mapping will take much time, but the eventing and coding will take a bit longer, since there's a lot of non-combat activity going on. (Don't worry, those of you who hate minigames - this stuff doesn't really qualify as a minigame. And besides, it'll probably be fun!). I expect this will take 2-3 days.
• Scenes/dialogues: Since my last update I've written about 20% of the dialogue, and planned out which scenes I'll be including and what'll be in them. The writing itself was very, very difficult for me to do during the sojourn, but I finally have my workspace back - it's considerably better than before, actually - so it should be much easier. I expect this will take 3 days.
• Testing: This will probably take a day. I'll try to avoid the game-crashing bugs I usually include with first releases :)

I will be including a hard mode for the new dungeon - for those of you who like challenges - but that won't be implemented until 0.6's final patch. The main reason is that making something hard but not too hard is a tricky thing to get right, which will involve quite a lot of playtesting, and I don't want to delay 0.6's release just for that. I'll also be implementing an extra mechanic or two in hard mode, and I haven't finalized exactly what that'll look like yet.

So, that's where the game's at. Now, I feel like I should share what's been happening with me over the past month, which directly relates to why development hasn't been faster.

I've been living out of hotels for the past month - literally. My companion and I moved all the way across the country to what she thought was a job. It turns out that she didn't actually have a job there, and what's more, we really didn't like it there. So, we've been spending the last few weeks driving around to different places - and she's been looking for jobs - with the remainder of my time split between developing the game and doing my other job, to the detriment of both.

Things are sorted out now - we're in a place that I think we'll do well in, and I'm glad to be back in the PNW! - but it was really weird for a while. I'd probably describe it as a long anti-vacation. You go places and see things, but it's not fun because you're constantly wondering if this is "the place", or if you can get a job there.

Also, a free tip for anyone who might be in a similar situation one day: don't bring a pet without a lot of pre-planning. Put 'em in a kennel or something if you have to. Long term traveling with a pet is expensive and makes everything much more complicated :/

On the up side, I have a much broader perspective on what the housing and job markets look like across a pretty broad chunk of the country, and I've ideas for a few apps that I might try to develop :D

Anyway, I wanted to let you guys know what was going on with the game and with me. I'm sorry it's taken so long - I really didn't think it would take as long  as it has to get things worked out - and I'm as frustrated as you that development hasn't been faster. Things will be faster now, but I really wanted to let you know that the release won't be out this month since I'd earlier promised that it would be.

Thank you for your patience and your support!  ◕‿◕