Perky

Download the full-size version of this crazy image here.

Hello everyone, it's time for another update!

I've been absorbed in writing/creating for the last few days, but there's been plenty of other things going on. It seems like this little island is going to get hit by a tropical storm, hopefully all the stuff that would break from that was already broken from the typhoon, so we'll be able to keep electricity and all that. Hopefully. The release is still planned for the 1st of October. If anything crazy crops up, it might end up being late at night for those in Europe, but so far it's running well :D

On the writing front, all the female start writing up to character creation is done. This portion of the story is a lot longer in the female start than the male start, and makes up the bulk of the writing. I'm going to try to have it ready to play all the way out of the prologue for this release too. There's over 17,000 words of new content ready for this release, so there will be a decent amount for you to see in 15.0.

I discussed it before, but it was quite a long time ago now... The female start is definitely the darker of the two, and involves much more of the Institute rather than focusing more on Appletree as the male start does. You'll be able to see some of that in action.

There's also the fun institute test fully integrated into the game.

The super-special career fair is up and running, but most of the informational exhibits aren't done yet... I focused most of the writing on the action, so there isn't a lot of "about the institute" type writing here yet.

Oh, and the OMNI system is working as expected. There's also a display, and a couple status effect type things set up to see...

I'm pretty happy with this little guy, especially considering how quickly I was able to put it together. It's mainly for the story, but it's set up to be quite easy to use, so it'll probably get some use in later scenes. It's basically some animated text effects emulating a basic terminal. Not perfect but still pretty neat. :D

Just a few more days and 15.0 will be out, I hope you guys will enjoy the new stuff as much as I enjoyed working on it this month :D

That's it for now, so stay safe, and watch out for James Bond's incurable MegaSTD.

o7

Quick Update

Hey everyone, I just thought I'd take a moment to say hello, and let you know what's been going on. Still working for a cool release, Looks like a pretty solid block of content in addition to all the other stuff. I think you'll like what's in store, though most of the new content is for the female start because I want to get it to some sort of passable point. 

With some of the extra recovery time, there's been more fun tomfuckery on Discord, which is usually pretty interesting. Talking about writing and developing characters, this fun Bowsette explosion, and role playing games. Even been kicking around some D&D stuff, which is neat, because I've been playing tabletop RPGs for over two decades. (Though I usually get stuck doing the DMing, which is fun in its own way, but it's also nice to be able to actually play once in a while!)  

So I'm going to post some super-random images that have came up at one point or another...

I can't even remember why I started drawing this, tbh

This one isn't my fault, I swear. I mean, sure, I drew it, but it wasn't my idea!

TimeCock

Hello everyone, it's been a little while, hasn't it?

I've been hard at work on AW, trying to get 15.0 set up as an awesome release. But, I've also been following my eight hours of AW per day restriction... At least for the most part. I have a tendency to "run over" without realizing it, but it's usually under half an hour. In any case, I feel so much better. I think I'm still slowly recovering, but it's amazing how much difference it's made so far. I actually started feeling like I really wanted to write, for one thing. I've got about 3,500 words of new content added to the female start, as well as some of the other items set up like the career placement survey for the Institute job fair.

Aside from the writing, I've gotten a lot of other stuff done as well. I'm not exactly sure what I've covered already, but there was plenty of menu consolidation/improvement, fixing the cheat and NPC menus, adding he auto-backward compatibility system for saves, as well as a little more work on the Omni System, including converting event object functions into JSON and back again (it turned out to be more of a pain than it sounds). There's also a few other things like improving the texting interface, adding a new macro to simplify twee if/then logic for kinks and traits, creating a bug report form and bug display for the website to help simplify that process. (While getting bug reports is great, a majority of the bug reports I've been getting haven't included a lot of really basic info necessary to actually fix the bugs, so the form should help.) I also spent a little time getting things set up for Besty to start in October, and now it seems like we're pretty much ready to go. 

Oh, and this thing:

Which is basically my answer to: how can you have train molesters without a train? The whole train molestation thing has been a recurring question, quite a few people have asked about one variation or another. Obviously Appletree doesn't have a train or subway setup that would allow that kind of kink, it's just not big enough. However, autonomous buses crammed full of institute employees commuting to work does provide that kind of situation. 

TimeCock:

(Based on a little investigation, I've determined that the original artist for these gifs is someone called "Derpixon".)

TimeCock isn't really anything related to the game, at least not yet (I may have inspired some institute events). It's a series events related to saving functions as JSON strings that go along with Omni events, I was doing some tests with the demo event. Well it turns out that SugarCube has a plugin that adds a function.toJSON() method, but of course that method doesn't work for actually saving and restoring functions. But the modified prototype was breaking the method I set up to do the same thing. 

Anyways, as I was solving this particular problem, the good Jimbo stepped in to curse things. It's a special gift he has. I share something on discord that I created/added/coded/whatevered that's usually something good, Jimbo says "Uh oh", and something proceeds to break. Sometimes in a rather spectacular fashion, especially if he said "that doesn't sound good" instead of the usual "Uh oh". So I think I solve the issue with the function saving issue (which is apparently the bane of many twine authors, I'll have to share the solution somewhere). After I say in General what I think went wrong, and what I did to fix it... Jimbo comes in.

So I go to test the solution. It fails spectacularly, so basically it's "Jimbo cocked it up again", more poignantly because part of the problem seems to be related to a tiny little recursive function that is called simply "cock()", for no real reason, just because. So I go to examine what went wrong, and every test of the loaded save shows that it's working exactly as expected. 

So then I start digging into the logs. There's some really weird reverse causality stuff that happened that makes about zero sense. So then we have TimeCock. It was like the grandfather paradox, except in JavaScript. Instead of killing your grandfather, you throw an exception. So there was plenty of joking around about this craziness while trying to sort it out. Basically it went something like:

Load a save => non-existent (hasn't been loaded) TimeCock causes an exception => fun error messages showing that the save didn't load properly => TimeCock unexceptions?  => no exception => unexecuted loading code is apparently executed, meaning TimeCock now actually exists => TimeCock now actually executed in proper place at end of sequence => loads fine. => TimeCock Goes back in time => Causes exception during load...

Anyways, everything seemed to work fine after that and the error never repeated. loading the same save, etc. caused no issues. Fun times :P

So that's it for now... hopefully I'll finish writing up to at least to the penimorph segment tomorrow :D

o/

Some Previews

Just thought I'd share a few previews. Wrapped up the menu fixes (incl. cheats & npc settings) today, and got some other misc stuff taken care of, including making sure things are ready to go for Besty. Also fixed the "restart" button, so that now you can restart without issue, but in turn that screwed with the "page has been refreshed" warning... So I disabled that check if the restart button was used. Not much more I can do there, unfortunately. I spent some time this evening wrapping up this little gem:

and now I think I'm going to go read some of my favorite series about large chests.

Oh yeah, and some collapsing groups for the game encyclopedia, so that it's easier to find stuff. :D

I'll leave you with this important safety message:

Double Trouble

Ahoy there, everyone.

I've got a pretty neat post for you today; there's some exciting news as well as the patron survey results to cover. Here in Guam land, I finally got my electricity and internet back yesterday, so things are starting to return to normal. There's been a lot of cleanup and tree removal, so things look different. The more remote areas still don't have electricity (and running water in some cases), however. I hope everyone on the east coast is doing well, and that there is a quick recovery.

Bug Spotter: There have been a couple reports of an issue in the public build of version 0.13.1 that causes the player to become stuck during the prologue. (on the skill check tutorial page) I didn't receive any reports about it from the earlier releases, and I just finished loading and testing 13.1 [public], and couldn't replicate the error. Outside of more detailed information, I don't have a suggestion except to avoid attempting to alter game variables with the console, and if you notice a point in the game where you start getting console error messages, that would be helpful info.

Exciting News! [background]

So before this last typhoon kind of mucked up my plans, there was something I wanted to discuss with all of you. Realizing that putting long hours into development was affecting my health--not to mention causing me to miss out on a lot--got me thinking. This project was never about making money for me; it's always been mostly about making the game I wished would exist into a reality.

Patreon/crowdfunding is great for making that possible, and it's also great how it gives some people the opportunity to support themselves creating things. For me, it was a matter of earning enough money to make up for lost revenue elsewhere (mostly paid freelance consulting work), and then making enough to pay for spiffy art assets and other things to either directly improve the game or help support it in some way. Guam is a expensive place to live, even with COLA, but I'm fortunate enough to have a good job outside of AW that pays the bills.

So nothing has changed in regard to wanting to create Accidental Woman, but what has changed is how I'm looking at what to do with the money you all are kind enough to send my way. I realized that at the approximate funding level AW has maintained for the last several months, it might be possible to hire an actual employee, and thus expand the amount of development hours being put into the game that way.

Working with commissions is a time consuming process, and while more money means more money for commissions, it also means more work to actually utilize that commission money (wisely). Someone regularly involved in the project however, doesn't need a lot of that recurring work. It's a more collaborative situation, and the effort goes more towards creating the game rather than a specific asset. It is also something that would allow me to better focus my development efforts towards the creative/complex/content related areas of development.

Exciting News! [actual news]

I've hired Besty to be part of the AW development team as a full-time associate developer, and he'll be starting officially in October. Much like what I do, his work will also vary between different areas of development depending on what we're working on. I have every confidence that he'll be a valuable part of the project :D

This is sort of a beneficial confluence of several factors, all the myriad requirements aligning in a way that makes it possible. So many of you are probably wondering "Who's this Besty Guy?" He's been following AW for a long time now, and has helped out here and there along the way. He's also responsible for inspiring a few things in the game as well...

Aside from his involvement with AW, he has the sort of multi-faceted experience useful for developing games, from graphic design and storytelling to programming and game development. He has his own game on Patreon in fact, which you can find here. It's primarily a Russian language game, though there is also English translation as well. I'll continue to do most of the writing for AW, in case the potential language issues concern you. His English writing has improved pretty dramatically over the months though, so it shouldn't cause any problems anyway.

Besty's aesthetic seems to mesh really well with mine, and he has come up with plenty of interesting ideas as well, and he's actually helped a lot on that front recently in improving the look of AW. He's plenty proficient in JS and programming concepts to help out on that front too.

I personally think that it's really cool to be able to offer him a job with a significant pay raise over his previous employment, but it's really a win for everyone involved (win^3?). Besty gets to work doing something he's more interested in for more money, I get more help developing AW and some supplements to my weaker points, and you all get faster development of AW, or more bang for your buck. :D

Feel free to say hello or give him a poke on Discord if you're so inclined, lol. 

Development Survey Results

I hope you like graphs, because boy do I have some graphs to show you! First, let's take a look at how important different areas of development are to all of you:

Probably the most interesting result is for the importance of graphic design / art assets / etc. (basically everything art-like outside of commissioned art) The next would be how important the number of releases per month are to all of you. Looking at the results combined:

This chart shows the average score for each category side by side. The takeaway is that you guys care pretty consistently about different aspects of development, so it won't do to focus on one thing to the point of excluding others.

And now for the most important question of them all...

Go circle! 

For the following charts, both raw and weighted are already adjusted for the number of votes each patron gets. For the weighted comparison, the relative importance for each individual is used to adjust the "size" of their vote on a topic. This means that your vote for something important to you counts a bit more, while your vote on a subject that isn't important to you counts a bit less. It's more for informational purposes, as it doesn't dramatically shift the outcome.

It seems fairly safe to say that for most of you, releasing once per month is sufficient. I think that in the future, I will be aiming for a monthly release. If the situation arises, however, I might do the occasional mid-month release without as much fanfare, particularly if something could use some feedback or testing. 

I remain amazed, grateful, and a little embarrassed that so many of you seem to really enjoy these posts. Well, at least the more normal posts rather than this particular monstrosity... Once per week is the clear winner here, so I will be reducing my post frequency. To start, I'll go with one post a week, plus an extra post for the special topic. As a concession, I will do some irregular brief posts as the situation warrants on the dev blog, sans post image.

Writing a couple paragraphs on the blog without extra images will take a lot less time, and without a fixed schedule I can do that when I get a little spare time or need a break, rather than scheduling a period of work for it. We'll see how it goes and adjust from there. Most likely I'll keep the short no-photo posts on the dev blog / website only, rather than mirroring it to Patreon.

So hiring Besty kind of messes with commissioning, pushing it back somewhat as the funds (and more) set aside for commissions is going to be going that way. I will try to change the patreon goals to better reflect the new situation in regard to funding. This isn't to say that no art will ever be done, or anything like that. It's just an adjustment in the budget.

So this is the really important one. It seems that the majority is still in favor of the efficiency-based approach. The data for this question is a little unusual though, as I would have expected the "middle" value orange to be closer to being between the blue and green values. I think I wasn't entirely clear with this question, as I'm not going to be changing my approach to good design and development practices. This does show that there is a strong desire to see more content in each release, which is something I'll try to follow in future releases. 

Wrapping Up

I'm not sure it can be said too often, but thank you for your continued support. Even if you don't contribute financially, knowing that there are people people that care about the project is a huge moral booster. Of course, for those of you who do help with financial support, I'd like to give an extra helping of thanks. Without you, AW wouldn't be possible, and we definitely wouldn't have a tsar working for us.

I'd also like to say thanks for being so understanding with my medical situation and work reduction. I know I'll still be working 40+ hours per week on AW, but I still have a strong desire not to let you guys down. I'm not sure I'd be able to be comfortable with the change and actually stay within my limits if it wasn't for you guys!

I'll wrap up this giant post now, but I'll leave you with a couple images :D

o/

ThaumX

Hey, I'm Alive!

Image courtesy of the SlavSquat Tsar himself: Besty

Hello everyone, I'm still alive!

It's been an interesting couple days out here in Guam land, and despite the warning from some congress-critters back in D.C., the island did not capsize. I hear that there's a storm moving into the east coast, so I hope any of you that live out that way stay safe. 

Safety Message!

I've heard that there's a rare species of mimic that likes to mimic generators, and that they've been spreading all over. Be sure to give any not-running generators a solid stab with a spear, or perhaps a few good bashes with a baseball bat before approaching!

We got pretty lucky with this one it seems, it wasn't as bad as initially forecast, so we only got hit with the equivalent of a category 1 storm here on Guam. It kindly waited until passing before turning into this beast:

Still, despite being fairly minor, a large portion of the island lost electricity, telecom, and even running water in some areas. The marvel of Guam infrastructure... but the utility employees have been working non-stop to get things back to normal. We still don't have power or internet at my place, so I'm writing this from work. (The cell network came back up yesterday evening, but is super-slow thanks to everyone trying to use it.)

Hopefully we'll get power back in the next couple days, and our generator does make the wait a lot more tolerable. I just bought another 15 gallons of gasoline today, and it seems a gallon lasts about 2 hours for us. Fortunately I can buy gas at the ANG post, because off-base gas is going for $4.42 per gallon. 

I haven't been entirely idle the last couple days, though it has been a bit tough to get things done with everything going on. Tomorrow I'm going to calculate the results of the survey, but for now I'll leave you with some preview images of the character menu:

Note that the body image to the right there is just a placeholder I whipped up.

That's all for tonight, stay safe everyone!

o/