Update from last week "when life gets rough" gamedev

[@gokcetunc1476]

Hellooo Thanks for the video! I am glad to hear that you are feeling better than last week despite all those problems ^^. I really do hope everything improves better for you either :3 that would be even more happy news for everyone ^^ writing main and side stories in 8-9 days is actually amazing in my opinion! 0w0 sometimes letting your mind some time to think helps you a lot in many cases! ıt goes well with math actually! sometimes when ı can't solve a math question ı just stop looking at it for a while and after some time ı solve it! ı found it very surprising myself at first but then hearing that other people's experiences ı came into conclusion: doing things with time can be a lot efficient. Although sometimes opposite can be also true? because me and my many friends can do %70 of the job when the deadline is close...haha ;w; I still would prefer doing things with time though ıt feels more natural than simply squeezing whole process into short time. Even when ı was little ı do remember parents telling their kids ''of course you can make art or music but only as a hobby because you cant make a living from it''. People who can do art and music as their jobs would seen as lucky. Although having your hobby as your job may seem lucky ı don't think ıt would always be the case. I guess people don’t really understand others without going through their experiences themselves. Art and music especially seem to bring out these assumptions, as they can be seen as either a hobby or a career, giving people different ideas. It's wonderful that you’ve found a system that works for you and allows you to enjoy creating at your own pace! Doing things because you want to is much better than feeling forced to do them. I hope you always have plenty of enjoyable moments without worrying about expectations or pressure! ^^ For me, schedules are just loose plans for the future. Maybe it’s because I usually can’t stick to them that I tend to make backup plans or set minimum goals like, "At least I need to finish this much." of course, ı can simply run to minimum set plans but they also make me feel less guilty when ı feel like ı dont want to do anything and simply do things with minimal effort. because when ı make a plan and somehow don't do it I may start to feel stressed or guilty. Such feelings also disturbs my ''potentially relaxing time'' too. So in the end not ı only don't do anything about my plans but ı also feel restless and the whole time becomes a waste... so ı tend to tell myself ''ıt ok let's at least do this'' or ''ok ı didn't do as ı wanted but ıts fine ı need to keep going'' rather than roasting myself or stressing out. It may not be most productive way but at least ıt still better than other way. thanks for sharing the news about your schedule! ^^ with game's main story being separated its a lot better to have longer time! ıts very exciting about how close the game is to be finished :3 The polishing phase made me think of something I noticed on my second playthrough of ADW. It’s not really a problem, and I don’t think people would mind, but since I played the game from the very beginning to Mission 8, some missions felt like they were coming one right after the other. For example, after finishing Mission 4, I was thinking to roam around the places, but as soon as I tried to leave my guest room, Samuel found me, and Mission 5 started right away 0-0 It’s a very minor thing, and I guess I was just surprised because, during my first playthrough, I had more time to explore between updates. I still managed to roam around and find special conversations thanks to other missions having different triggers so ıts totally fine actually. ^^ ooh a new Otome plan! 0-0 I actually like dark stories since they also let me to dig for emotions or meanings... ı just need to mentally prepare myself before playing it haha ^^; Even if its an idea for now hopefully things will go well in the progress. ^^

[@coffeedripstudios]

Hi @gokcetunc1476, thank you for all your kind words and sharing your experience and thoughts about this subject. Unfortunately, my child is sick this week and I am also still trying to get into a new routine with managing all the animals in the house. I've been taking time to walk the dog daily this couple days and I think it's helping me to slow down and not let myself feel overwhelmed. Like just be present in the world. The weather has been cooperative, so I hope I have at least a month before it starts to get too cold for it to be pleasant. I'm very inordinately proud of myself for getting this update done on time when I thought I wasn't going to make it, though I can't really say it was from working hard so much as the words just flowed fairly well and my brain felt like being cooperative LOL. I don't know, lets see if you notice any dip in quality with any of the conversations or story. Please don't be hesitant to let me know where you think I can make improvements. I'll probably do a final pass at some point to polish it all up like I plan to do with ADWVH. Like you, I have been working/testing/playing the game in segments and I haven't played through through the whole thing in one pass, so there might be things that feel differently that I might need to tweak in the end. The game is getting so long that I don't think I could play through the whole thing every update and still get anywhere in progressing the game! LOL hope you are doing well and I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

[@efai]

I'm a little late in replying to this video, but I'm glad you're feeling much better than in the last video.. I admire your persistence and ability to write so many lines of dialogue.. although I'm not a fan of long texts, because most of them are too redundant or too much, I prefer very short dialogues and information split and spread between multiple quick chats.. I often run into games that are pretty straight forward, but then at some point they throw 20+ minutes of dialogue at you, which is absolutely overwhelming.. I think this is something that puts a lot of people off playing VN games, because a lot of them tend to even describe what's happening on the screen too, which I've never really understood what it's good for.. my point is that you probably don't need to write 25,000 words or more per dialogue to write an interesting story, so that's might be a place where you can save time and have less work on your shoulders : )

[@coffeedripstudios]

Hi Efai, sadly I got really sick after this video but thankfully I am feeling better again and almost fully well, just a bit of a persisting cough that doesn't want to go away yet! I think you're right that i went overboard with the writing. thankfully for the player most of it all is all variant/optional conversation they can avoid or skip if they don't care too much about spending time with the characters. I try not to do big mandatory lore dumps, but i also do like to make a lot of variant writing so player can feel they are being responded to their choices. But also i could use an editorial hand now and then when I'm being excessive haha.