mity
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I am a dwarf and I'm digging a hole.
🕑 Added 2020-07-09 13:26:40 +0000 UTCStarting a new route is always a weird feeling. It's like you're on a treadmill and someone changes the speed from 3 to 8 and you'll do a bit of awkward stumbling before you can find your balance again. At the start of this month I've written and drawn the opening scene for book4's love route, but it'll be a while before I can entirely shake off the slave route feeling. There's also the fact the new scenes I'm working on aren't nearly as hardcore as the ones in the last build. That's something to get used to as well.
Still, I haven't done a lot of drawing this past week. I did some and I sent most of the scenes we'll be using for the first bk4 love route build to the coder. God knows some of those need redrawing(badly), but I've been doing some archeology instead and dug deep into the stratum of FET. And boy oh boy... what a journey of discovery that is! It sometimes feels like we build FET on a pet cemetery. With each new hole I dig I find a new horrific oddity I forgot we put there.
What I mean is... FET isn't exactly a spring chicken and when we started working on it neither of us had much of an idea how to do things. It was more of a "whatever works" mentality with which we jumped in at the deep end. Not knowing how sizeable the amount of files would become we weren't exactly too organized with our files. And that's the more benign part of it's inner faults.
Back then we still imagined the other books(2,3 and 4) to be about as big as book 1. Anyone who has reached the end of book 2 knows things evolved in a slightly different direction.
The amount of files FET is using has seen an exponential growth with each book... more like an explosion really. FET's file structure resembles an explosion as well. Anyone who has taken a look inside can attest to that.
Obligatory toph is blind joke!
Of course we've been slowly mending our ways during the creation of each new book, but there's a looooot of crazy stuff going on behind the scenes. I actually tried fixing that a year ago, but I got scared and ran away. Now that we're at the start of a new route and me having a slightly better understanding of what I can and can't do without destroying everyone's savegames I'm giving it another go.
Just imagine having a plate of the longest, stickiest, overcooked spaghetti and me trying to carefully pulling out a single strand each time without breaking it. It's the most tedious and time consuming thing ever. I can be pretty damn stubborn, but I've had more than a few times where I just wanted to "nope out". I'm constantly reloading to see whether something went wrong, because if you do too much at once without a reload and things go wrong it becomes really difficult to see what went wrong where.
The upside is that I've discovered the cause for a few weird error reports which I always got when the game broke down and in general it's satisfying to see how it's slowly becoming a bit more organized. But yeah... the speed at which all of this is happening is like filling a bucket of water. One... drop... at... a... time...
Organizing the mess has some advantages in the long run, but the main reason I'm doing this is the fact knowing the mess is there, lurking just below the surface, was driving me insane.
Unfortunately I still have to leave a lot like it is because of save-games and time considerations, but looking back on some of the stuff we did back then makes my toes curl backwards. Oh and I also made a deal with myself I wouldn't start redrawing anything. that's a time sink I can't allow myself to step into right now.
Quite frankly, I'm not entirely certain I can do this and not have to revert to an older (still messy) version in the end. This is just me giving it my best shot, but I can't be certain until the entire bucket has been filled, and I think I'm only about 20 percent done. If that!
I pretty much have this music on loop for the entire day while working on it.
With all of this going on and drawing/adding the additions to the end of book 4's slave route last month, it feels like a century ago I touched my 3d modelling software! I'm pretty much certain I've lost most of my skills in that department... again! that keeps happening whenever I decide to be a bit more serious 3d modelling. So anyone fearing a future project of us would be filled with weird 3d stuff... don't. The chances of that happening are slim at best.
There's not much else to mention. I got myself a new chair, because the old one was literally falling apart and I'm still super happy with my discovery of frictionless mouse wheels. The feeling of having no skin anymore on the tip of my finger is gone ever since I started to use that new mouse!
Also, most of you will know this already, but there's absolutely no way we'll have a new build ready this month. It's the start of a new route and that always takes more time. Especially since this route will have a lot less in common with it's slave counterpart than the earlier slave/love route combos during older books. I'm certain there's at least a few new people who don't know so I wanted to be super clear about that.
Anyway, that's what I've been doing and will be doing for a while longer. it's super boring, uneventful but I feel it's necessary to at least try and bring order to chaos even if it won't directly benefit the player now... though it might in the future...
And that's already it for this update. Till next time!
Comments
Bjn
Damn, been there with software projects and it's the worst. I wish there was a way to help
Deonast
https://wind-rose.bandcamp.com/album/diggy-diggy-hole
MITY
Haha, my back support literally fell off. It was wobbly for a long time, but hey... it still worked and I liked it so no problem, right : ) But then the final crack dislodged some sort of pin which was held back by plastic and off it went. I just went to my local store and tried out a few and picked one which I thought sat fine. No real brand or anything! I've pretty much grown up using whatever anyone else had to spare or cheap thrift store stuff(like the one which broke down) so it almost feels like sacrilege to buy new expensive stuff.
Yalgor
okay, but is it a Diggy Diggy Hole?
Apollo
The art updates aren't viewable from certain tiers. That must be how I missed it!
Ness7281992
What chair did you get? My office chair is falling apart, too. The recliner-locking pin thing likes to slip out at random and make me almost piss myself and crack my skull in on the table corner behind me, and enough of the leather is coming off that I'm starting to see the wood poke through on the front of the seaty bit. Oh, and it literally hurts my ass after a couple of hours because the cushioning's all shot to hell. I need to look around, but I've never bought one, it's always been second hand freebies from my parents, people they know from their church, my friends' parents, etc.
MITY
I may not cry outwardly, but there WILL come a time when I can look at FET's inner structure and say "that's... reasonably okay.... for the most part." and also not cry from the inside : )
MITY
Thanks Neb, we always try our best and it's nice knowing when people can allow for us to take longer when it's necessary. We've become a bit more horrible at sticking to dates than when we started, but it's never because we've been twiddling our thumbs and it's nice when people can understand that. Sometimes things just don't flow and take longer. Other times it's like a naked greased Toph sliding down a water slide : )
MITY
@ Apollo I'll at the very least adapt the title of the build post. I kinda thought it was apparent from the art updates, but a little clearer can't hurt.
MITY
@ Peter With difficulty! Don't expect to us to go too crazy... we're still just two guys trying our best... but I'm hoping we can work in at least some sort of differentiation.
neokenka
Your image folder structure... it makes me cry every time I unpack it. :P Seriously MITY, you've done great if morally questionable work, you've pushed envelopes when you weren't setting them ablaze, and you've given us a delightful, consistent MC whose arc of love/cruelty is fun as Hell. More important than all that... of course... is that you delivered on preggo content. God bless!
Neb the Pleb
This entire game is one of the best pieces of pornography ever created, don't sweat it. Quality is difficult, and requires massive attention to detail. No one expects it to be fast or easy, and people who complain you take to long just don't understand the time price of quality.
Peter Vanusanik
so how are you going to track multiple paths you could take across 4 books? Honestly it would be rad if your choices mattered :)
Apollo
You should make a post to say just that I reckon. People like me who don't want to play all the in-between builds could easily miss that from the changelogs! Now I have to download and try this out for the first time in many months...
Avatargowoosh
Ah well. Was so hoping to have the lights on scene for book 4. At least we still got Dr. Lazar Beem and Jinora.
MITY
Lol!!! Nononono, it's faaaar more than thousand. I could sleep peacefully if it was just thousand : ) but I catch your drift. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
MITY
Yes! Of course it's lacking the end chapter, but that's going to be a shared experience for both the love and slave route players after we finished the love route.
MITY
Ernie and Bernie said that?? https://youtu.be/ySFblxW3iok?t=27 But I gotta make at least a half assed attempt at cleaning up FET's insides. Even if it'd become bigger because of it. FET's guts as they are right now are so disorganized it's giving me bad dreams.
MITY
Whop! whop! whop!
MITY
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/401/347/312.jpg
MITY
yep, that's the one!
MITY
I finished like 90% of the Azula stuff today which feels like a major victory : ) 2:00 AM has become my 10:00 PM though... but as long as I don't see the sun rise I'm in the safe zone ; )
MITY
Not being the worst of the worst... feels like high praise : )
MITY
There's a reason why I picked Toph for our recurring art update pics : ) I like her a lot too!
MITY
Thanks we will! It's difficult to not want to give it our all every single day again when we see the amount of support we're getting.
MITY
Wait... are you telling me breathing two times a second is... too much?? ; )
MITY
Cleaning up the game code is too scary to think about right now... although there have been a few eye sores which are just begging me to deal with... but in general I'll be happy enough if there's al least somewhat of a semblance of order within it's file structure. Probably more of a personal dissatisfaction with chaos than anything else, but yes if we want to have an easier time adding or replacing stuff in the future some sort of clean up needs to happen.
MITY
I hate having to replay stuff myself and FET isn't a half hour game. Anything which makes a player go "aawwh shit" is something I'd like to prevent. But I do expect some breakage to happen which is why I waited until the start of a new route to do this with.
MITY
First time I head about this. Well, I have to warn you just getting FET to work on android hasn't always been a straightforward experience, but I'll give it a look.
MITY
Oh don't worry about that!! It's more because we're at the start of a new route and that's typically NOT when the threesome fisting parties start : )
Skidles
Just try not to get burnt out fixing 1000 little things. A little here, a little there... you know the drill.
Apollo
WAIT! Does that mean 0.8.7d has a complete & finished slave route?
Avatargowoosh
It's totally understandable bud! Gonna be getting withdrawals without my monthly dose of FET but can't wait to see what the love route has for book 4! Don't burden yourself with too much clean up. The game is not that big. I play it on my surface pro and I've got no problems with space. If it's a game breaker then yea that's understandable, but if not, just let it be. In the wise words of Ernie and Bernie; "Don't worry, about a thing. Cuz every little thing, is gonna be alright!" May the rasta jellies being you some comfort and relaxation when you stress. Don't forget to rest enough and stay healthy and feed yourselves!
gangnam style
Nemos
Everything will be fine as always
Diggy Diggy Hole https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34CZjsEI1yU
Deonast
The sausage analogy can go further with this game :)
Carpe Brewem
Most software is like sausage. If you knew what was inside your wouldn't enjoy it anymore
Tom Ristenbieter
we believe in you mity you can do it but dont overwork yourself
Peter Vanusanik
>Anyone who has taken a look inside can attest to that. It's not that bad.... okay it is but I have seen worse :D
Kenosha Bonisha
take your time mitty. Love the game cant wait to do a love route. Btw id love to see more toph content shes my favorite.
VitAnyaNaked
Do not worry about us and continue your work. You have long proved that your project is not a dummy and it is developing all the time.
morris ridgeway
Thank you for all you do. Take a deep breath and let it out slowly.
IdarksoulsI
As someone who has ventured quite deep into your game files I just wish you luck and strong mental health. I'd be surprised though if game (file) size would be a big issue for a lot of players. Maybe only for the android version? The end of FET is coming closer and closer .... ... ... ... (ಥ﹏ಥ), so I wouldn't put too much resources into cleaning up file structure (and game code?). Unless you're planning to maybe add a lot of things later? But whatever floats your boat. Just don't forget to enjoy the summer and allow yourself some private time too. Can't wait for what we'll see in the new book and all the drama it will create. (｀∀´)Ψ
uman
Hmmm...not sure why you are so determined to not break save games? Nearly all of the other games I subscribe to (about 7 others), break save games all the time. If it would make your life easier, just do it. Worst case, you give ppl a link to a working save at the start of each route? (And I wouldn’t even expect that).
Guernz
Edit* forced skip is probably the wrong word. It's probably fast skip. It's just labeled as F Skip.
Guernz
One thing I would like fixed, sometimes the skip and forced skip buttons stop working on Android. (Galaxy s20 ultra) Makes save scumming hard. 😥
Nörther
You know just because you are doing love route doesn't mean you have hold back on hardcore stuff ( to some degree ), I'm connoseurs of pervyness can figure it out
