RJ Update

Hello all, 

Man, the last two weeks have just flown by. I feel like I'm busy ALL the time. I got my partner back home and we are settled back into our normal routine again. 

For me that means getting up at 8, check the garden, drinking coffee while I work until noon, watching a show while I eat lunch, then back to work until 4. An hour break to chill, cook dinner at 5, eat and watch something around 6, then usually play games or read or something until I go to bed around 11. I need that routine. If it gets thrown off, it's hard for me to get anything done. 

We've also added another thing to our routine though, and started going for walks/runs in the park in the morning. I want to build up my stamina so that I can go on long hikes. There's several trails that I'd like to hike, but I'm not sure I could actually make it right now. I spend too much time in front of the computer every day, but hopefully I'll get to that point soon. For now, we're just walking around the park, with occasional sprints to build up stamina.

I've been cleaning a lot too. We have a spare room that is cluttered with old junk that I've been going through, because I want to get the room cleaned out so that I can use it as sort of a crafting room for D&D terrain and miniature painting. Our house is small, and we both have a lot of hobbies, so it gets cluttered very easily, so I've just been getting rid of a ton of things. 

Also, my D&D group kind of broke up. The couple who had been hosting it at their apartment for the last two years said that they couldn't really play anymore, as they were both struggling with schoolwork and just didn't have the time anymore. I completely understand, but that left me and the two other players wondering where we were going to play and who we were going to fill the gap in the group with. Turns out that we had a couple friends who wanted to join the group, and now we're playing at my house, which is a huge change for me. I'll be DMing the game though, so it actually makes it quite a bit easier, as I'll have all my tools and terrain here and wont have to transport it. It'll be interesting, but I'm super-excited for it. 

SMALL GAME UPDATE

I have been working a lot on the game the last week - doing some major changes with the programming and the actual gameplay. This is something that I wasn't planning on releasing until the big update next month (which I'll tell you all about later this week), but I decided that the changes that I made this week were so drastic and improved the game so much, that I'm going to release this small update on Friday in addition to the Chapter 4 stuff. 

This means that the version of the game that the $5 Patrons got last Friday is not going to be the same version that the $1 Patrons will get this Friday. This Friday's version will be way better. I still have to work some bugs out, but I really think you guys are going to like it. I've improved navigation tremendously, made it more obvious where you're supposed to go, and added a help menu that will show you how to advance every character's storyline. It's something that I've gotten a lot of feedback on, and I think that it'll improve your fun with the game a lot.

That said, there is a downside. I fixed a ton of problems in the way that I programmed variables, but this should make it so that future updates work better. But because of this, once again your saves will not work on this update. I know this is annoying, but I truly think this will be the last time this happens. When I fixed the game before, I just kind of programmed a workaround with the update system. With the new way I programmed it, I believe I actually did it right - there's no janky update system anymore, it just works.

Again, I'm learning all of this as I go, so I'm definitely going to make mistakes, but this last week working on the game has been extremely productive and eye-opening, and I think that most people who look at it will see that it's much MUCH better than the last version of the game. I hope you won't mind playing from the beginning too much. Skipping through scenes is fairly easy, and moving around the menus is much faster now. 

Anyways, that's all I have for today. I'll show some little previews of stuff throughout the week and then on Friday I'll release this version of the game and let you know what I'm planning for next month (which is a little different than what I have been doing).

Love you all and thank you as always for your support!