pedevelopment
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Regarding further development of Perverted Education
🕑 Added 2019-01-26 16:40:15 +0000 UTCTo start with, the PE Dev team would like to offer its apologies. It has been far too long since an update, and communication has been poor in recent months. There are a number of different reasons for this, but we feel we should start this announcement by saying we’re sorry and that we plan to do better in the future.
Since Saoirsa’s illness, our team has been missing our forward-facing member and coordinator, which meant that important information was not getting to our users and to fellow team members. We had hoped that she would be able to find a way to adjust to her illness and return to the role, but sadly, it was not to be. Even if she was able to return, it’s unlikely that she would be able to fill the role as effectively as she previously did. We hope she recovers and is eventually able to rejoin us in our venture, but for now, we will have to continue on without her. Thankfully, due to Saoirsa’s foresight, we still have access to all of the development tools she created for us such as the trello, GitHub, and the PE Dev Patreon. Thus, development can continue on those platforms with minimal hiccups.
In Saoirsa’s absence, I, ~ X ~, will be stepping up to take over as “PR rep” for the game, as well as working as one of a few coordinating forces in the team. It is likely that you will hear from other members of the dev team as well, but I will be the one posting announcements from here on. Since I am acting in the capacity of “voice of the team,” I will also do my best to make obvious when I am speaking from my own personal perspective (as I am wont to do) and in an “official” capacity (such as right now). I ask that you bear with me as I try to navigate the transition into my new role as I do not have a PR background. BritneyD is also taking a coordinating role, working more behind the scenes to try to keep things flowing and help our team avoid single-role bottlenecks.
Unfortunately, Saoirsa was not the only team member that real life managed to overwhelm the past few months. While we were excited to have April back on our development team after our initial relaunch, we also ended up relying too heavily on her knowledge of the code and programming expertise. We began a major redesign of how decisions were tracked in the code, almost solely developed by April, and when real life concerns caused delays, we found ourselves waiting for her return before pushing new content out. What we believed to be a short delay, quickly grew into weeks, then into months, and as the community became more concerned about the status of the game, we had few answers other than “we are waiting on April.”
We’ve decided to stop just waiting, and in an effort to remove the former bottleneck of relying on one coder, Moonhead and Gallant are stepping up as coders to help us push content out to our players faster. As you can likely see with Moonhead’s recent mod package release, he has a very good knowledge of the code and how it works, and his expertise will be instrumental in helping us release new updates. Additionally, Gallant has recently finished working on an amazing UI improvement that will hopefully be added to our next release. His work clearly shows his ability, and we are glad to have another strong coder on our team. As we are working on this next release, we will be assessing the need for another coder as well and will let you know if we begin actively seeking more help. April, of course, is still a valued member of our team, and we certainly welcome any assistance she gives us as we move forward with the project and are grateful for the work she has already done.
With this new effort to continue development, we are hoping to put out an update by the end of February. However, since we are working without April’s vast knowledge of the code base, it is likely the update will be small and focused on adding story content to the game. It is doubtful to include the major stat-tracking rework that April was working on. We do plan to revisit the idea at a later date, once we have managed a more sustainable release schedule. Our goal, as before, is to create monthly updates. The scope of each update is as of yet unknown and will likely be based on the free time of our coders. Again, if we find we are unable to keep a consistent schedule, we will look into finding more coders to help fill our gaps.
We know many of you were or are Patreon supporters of either April Ryan’s patreon or the PE Dev Team patreon, and expressed concern over supporting us as the flow of updates began to dry up. We agree that it is unfair for you to have to pay to support a project with little output. As such, we have changed the pay schedule of the PE dev patreon (the one we have access to) over to a “pay on release” schedule. Instead of recurring monthly payments, payments will be collected when a release is posted to patreon. This means that even if something were to happen to the team again and development slows to a halt, you will no longer continue paying until development begins again and a new update is released. We hope that this new schedule will provide those of you who are kind enough to support us with peace of mind that you won’t be paying money for nothing as well as encourage us to release on a more regular basis. We will also be looking into additional benefits for patreon subscribers beyond just access to the avatar version. We cannot guarantee that April Ryan’s patreon will also change to per release nor that new updates will be posted there as only April can access that page at the moment.
Phew, that was a long announcement. Here’s the main points, just in case the wall of text scares you:
- The PE Dev team apologises for the lack of updates and poor communication and will work to improve these in the future.
- Saoirsa has stepped down from her role as project lead for the time being. The role is now being filled by a few team members, and I will be acting as mouthpeace for the team going forward. I will try to make clear what is my own opinion and what is “official,” but please bear with me.
- Moonhead and Gallant are stepping up to help us create releases even in times when April is unable to code. Another coder may be brought on if Moonhead and Gallant feel it is needed.
- Our goal is for a new release at the end of February, which will include new story content which has been ready for release as well as other smaller changes. It is unlikely that it will feature the decision tracking update April was working on, but the idea is not being abandoned.
- To avoid charging patrons during times with no releases and to encourage releases on our end, the PE Dev Patron has been changed to a “per release” format. These changes are not reflected on April Ryan’s old patreon page, as only April has access to that page.
Once again, we as a team apologize for the lack of releases and communication over the past few months. We will work our best to rectify this situation and are grateful for those of you who have supported us thus far.
~ X ~ and the PE Dev Team
Comments
Lt. Col. Thorin
Thanks for the update, It's good to know you're doing your best! Looking forward to the end of February
~X~
Hey. ~X~ here. In the case of Patreon, most of my correspondance will need to go through Bobbob to get posted here. For more up to the minute access, join our discord here: <a href="https://discord.gg/YeFGvHj." rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://discord.gg/YeFGvHj.</a> Patrons even have an exclusive channel for discussions about the patreon. If you are a patron and do not have a purple name, let me know and I'll work with Bobbob to find a way to verify your patronage and give you access. Thanks!
