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Fortnightly Progress - 31st January
🕑 Added 2024-01-31 16:23:59 +0000 UTCFirst things first, no more being a deeply silly billy about getting these out every two weeks. It doesn't really help me putting them off, and it just makes things more uncertain than they should be. Come what may next one of these will be out in the week starting the 12th.
Well, it's half way through the last day of the month and it's clear that I'm not going to get the RAGS update out today. Mix of the bad, in that the progress hole I'd ended up in with everything that had been inflicted on me last year was far deeper than I had suspected, but wonderfully also for the legitimately good in that the Twine conversion is going way, way better than I ever could have hoped.
I've been working on the Twine conversion for years, and honestly I didn't know if I was ever going to be able to do this. I'm not a programmer by education, training, or work experience outside of what I've been able to pick up by first using RAGS, and then trying to translate that into Twine, which I've noted on many an occasion is so not the sensible way to go about things, and how the two languages logic really don't go together without a whole lot of extra work. I've heard plenty of craptalk about Twine about what it could actually do which worried me that something as complex as No Haven just wouldn't ever work. There was the UI concerns that had killed whole alternate attempts like that full month I spent trying to learn ren'py that initially seemed to be going well before it hit a brick wall. Add the fallout of what happened with the Whorelocks Revenge conversion attempt, a game that had been universally praised in RAGS, and was now attracting the most hostile feedback that I'd ever experienced doing this was the source of quite the few recurring nightmares.
So that people are playing the Twine version, that it basically works, that people seem to be liking it, even in the currently very limited early access form, and that so far there's no sign that the scope is going to be too much for it too handle is such a load of my mind and a boost to my confidence.
Got another version of No Haven on twine out since the beginning of the month. That along with some fixes mostly sorted out Full Custom starts as I knew that was going to be one of the things people most wanted asap.
After that there was the first Direction Polling for the Twine version. The winner of that was the Training Assignments which are being worked on now. That's going really well and should be out before the next Fortnightly. Possibly next week sometime even as I've managed to get quite a few of the trainings working already seeing both successes and not successes in testing.
What's even better though is that I've got import/export custom character starts working.
This was one of my main concerns with the conversion as, due to my previously mentioned lack of know-how, not only did I not have any clue how to do this, but I was struggling how to even google exactly what I needed.
Originally I was just going to put it off and worry about it later. Ideally much, much later. It was becoming clear though that spamming the Quintari starts for that handy Proactive over and over was getting old super quickly, and if I could somehow be able to import a full custom with it that'd be such a plus for testing if I could somehow get it to work...
First solution that I found that I thought really would be the solution, and talked about on the last stream as a potential breakthrough, worked not at all. After several more dead ends, as I was having trouble just working out what to google for what I needed, I found a page with a great selection of Twine functions including exactly what I was looking for. Still required some working out, quite a lot of working out as the case would be, as just copy pasting their function was very much just the start of the process, but I've managed to solve it entirely, and now it's working great! It'll also be an evergreen functionality regardless of the current update, assuming of course that I don't have to make specific changes to the variables involved, so a character you export in Twine 0.2 should, theoretically, still work in Twine versions that comes out months and even years later.
As an extra bonus the page also had another function that meant that rather than needing to click the 'Click to Continue' link specifically now you can just click anywhere and it will still work. It will even work if you know it's a screen that you'd normally need to scroll down on to click through.
I've also added a new Super Negative that's going to be in the Twine version only and won't ever be in RAGS. Mainly as it got suggested on Discord, it was a quick win to add, but mainly cause the name that I thought of would be funny for it.
Speaking of RAGS the way I see there's two plans going forward now. I've already had some feedback on the merits/flaws of both of these, but I'd absolutely appreciate your thoughts.
- Plan A aka the original idea aka 'Carry on Regardless'
Keep the RAGS updates coming along with the Twine update until such time that the Twine version is comparable to the RAGS version, and then I'd drop the RAGS updates entirely to focus on Twine. Twine updates would continue as they are now with them being kept to the Discord+Twine tier and above for awhile, and then determine when to make them available on the lower tiers basd on progress as it gets much more substantial. This is what I'm going to do is if I can manage to dig myself out of that previously mentioned progress hole relatively easily before the end of February as that should mean that I can get back to a far more sensible update schedule.
- Plan B aka 'Let it Go'
Make the next RAGS update the last one. I must admit this is tempting just as that would be 0.99 and ending RAGS there does tickle me greatly given how much I've stupidly stressed over what 1.0 represented in the past. Yes, I know that they're meaningless numbers that are entirely under my control. I did emphasize this is such a silly thing to worry about, but it is also so very me to do so but I digress. Okay so this is going to be what happens if that progress hole takes me right until the end of Feb to climb out of and/or if it's overly stressy with RAGS being RAGS in the way it can oh so often be. In that case I'll release whatever the current Twine version to the TF Edition tier and above, and release the none TF Edition Twine version to the First Notification tier and above. After that going forward the Discord+Twine tier and above will continue to have first access to any Twine version by two weeks. If there's the need for a hotfix within those two weeks then the lower tier access will be released two weeks after that version instead.
For either plan the non-patreon free version will continue to be the current RAGS non TF Edition until the Twine version catches up. Learned my lesson the hard way from Whorelocks about opening this up too quickly, and so I want the Twine version to be a fully functional viable alternative before I push it out to those who aren't already into the game.
In the case of Plan B the big issue is all the content I owe to patrons who have been waiting far too long and whose patience I seriously very much appreciate for bearing with me through my trials. My aim is to incorporate some of that outstanding content into the upcoming Twine versions instead as possible so they can both get it earlier than waiting for RAGS, and in a version that's a lot more pleasant to deal with. There's no need for Twine to follow the exact same update path after all, and as mentioned I've already added some new Twine only content. in that Super Negative.
Now this is easier said than done as some planned content is very much built on top of other existing content that is yet to be implemented in the Twine version I took from RAGS a couple of years back. So while a new assignment could say be added easily enough before say re-implementing weapons examines, a storyline based assignment that only becomes several more related storyline assignments are re-implemented first is going to be a lot more time/effort intensive. I've mentioned in a previous Fortnightly that I have hugely steamlined how to convert RAGS to Twine, in a way that has already massively sped up the process and there's already some entirely up to date version stuff in the Twine version, but that's still also going to need a lot of work until I can get it to that oh so sweet theoretical point where I can paste in RAGS code, push a button, and then get out mostly usable Twine code.
Again this is something that i really appreciate hearing your thoughts on so I can determine the best possible path for everyone going forward.
Dang that was a lot of text, so If you're still here to read this, thanks!
- Commissions
July+August (2022) - Dominance Training : Progress, glorious, glorious actual progress! They said they'd finish it by the end of Jan. Not going to happen now obviously, but maybe something next month this might finally be done with?
November - Valkynes : I've seen the first sketch, and I think this is going to be a popular one. Her outfit is already spot on. No progress since the last one of these.
November+December - Baffling Bunglers : I've seen a number of sketches as we've worked together to get the pose right. I think that's solved now though.
November+December - Raid Nomad Camp : This is confirmed with an artist but I've not seen a sketch yet.
As for the current commission poll with five hours to go until the end it's entertainingly close.
Just five votes currently seperate the first choice with the third. At this point a small change in votes could push Spite Fire or Basic Sissy Training past the current front runner in Orc Cum Addict Training.
Next commission poll will be up probably the following Tuesday or Wednesday.
Massive, massive appreciation as always for your patience and support!
Comments
Petra
I'm really tempted to say go with Plan A because I love getting new versions to play a couple times a year... but Plan B seems the most logical from a game dev standpoint. The problem is really that people have paid to fund certain content and that'll be a much longer wait for them in Plan B, but I don't really feel like I can weigh in on that because I haven't done that. Perhaps you could focus on getting the RAGS version updated with specific content people have paid to fund, but note that in the future you'll be switching to pure conversion work before adding significant new content? I'm not really sure how it works.
Photon
As much as the RAGS engine has done great things, I think Plan B is the way to go. It'll end up taking longer (I assume) if you're trying to split dev time between the two engines, and I've noticed RAGS having more issues over time.
