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