Hello everybody,
I just wanted to apologise for the delays and the messy release of v.0.13 so far, there are a lot of factors to it, but they are all my fault and that can be incredibly annoying for you all and I am really sorry for this.
Essentially it comes down to my inability to know when to stop, traditionally I use deadlines to force me to stop making new stuff and actually release the updates, and I then work to the deadline and cram to finish. I don't have any experience in game development, programming or in any kind of product launch other than this, I have a legal background only and I'd imagine that is not how you use a release date professionally. Whilst in the past the last week before the date I can usually successfully cram the update in, or close to, the release date, with the complete size of v.0.13 this just has not been possible.
I think many people who have been here for a long time are aware this is how I work, but with the explosion of growth I think many people, especially those who are new, would not know this. So to both groups of people I again would like to say sorry for that.
You can't really put milk back into the bottle (unless you want some nasty floor bacteria), and I still may unfortunately miss a couple more of the deadlines for v.0.13 by the odd day or so as I finish them, however for the future, here are some steps I will be taking going forward to stop this from happening again.
Weekly Progress Reports - Every week after v.0.13 is fully concluded I'll post an update with what is going on and what has been done. This should enable you to better see what is going on. These will be posted every Friday afternoon.
Significant Changes to Alpha Testing - Currently I send my Alpha testers scenes, and they then return the scene, which is why I have had such trouble when I put all the scenes together. They've tested Bimbo Steph Scene 3, Ellie Scene 6 etc none of them have tested "the update" at all. Again, this probably isn't how professional testing works. Instead now I will complete a character's entire update, and send them the entire thing to test. This will mean one, the update isn't being pieced together right at the end, and two, they'll be able to tell me what they think needs expanding. I'm also going to get them (and myself) checking for typos more thoroughly. This means I will no longer set release dates until the complete update is in Alpha stage, however from the monthly previews and the weekly progress logs you'll be able to keep up with exactly where we are in development.
Monthly BETA Scenes for £10+ Supporters - In order people can see what is going on, every month I will release a scene of up to 100 renders long for these tiers to play through if they wish. These scenes may be incomplete and won't be in order, it is just a scene like a movie might show a five minute trailer or a fight sequence. This has dual purposes, one you can get a nice preview of what is coming up if you wish, two it stops me stockpiling renders and putting everything together at the end like I have been doing in the past.
Hopefully with these changes, it will prevent this happening again in the future and help me run more smoothly. If you have any other suggestions - polite ones - please let me know.
Hope you're enjoying what has been released of v.0.13 so far!
WP