Moving forward

Well, as I expected, I dropped about $50 below the goal at the first of the month. It happens, a few people always drop out around that time.

However, I'm moving ahead on the assumption that next month I will meet that goal at the start of September. Whether or not it drops below that afterwards, I will continue to work for the rest of that month on the schedules established by the goal. (So basically, let's establish that as the goal... if I'm at $1200 on the 1st, the rest of the month is on the full-time schedule. That makes way more sense than going on and off it with every little fluctuation.) 

Before I go any further, I want to take a moment to thank everybody. When I started this Patreon it was with no other intentions than it being a tip jar. I thought maybe, maybe I could pull in $100 a month or something for my little hobby here, and even that mostly because people kept asking if I had one because they wanted to donate. All of you have shown me that you're really interested in this and really enjoying it. Not just your donations, but your compliments, messages of encouragement, and compassion when I've suffered illness or difficult times have been really uplifting. To borrow a phrase that is cheesy but heartfelt, you are all the wind beneath my wings, and I appreciate you very much.

Anyway! Moving on, let's get to discussing the changes ahead!

New Version History Style

From now on, the Version History will display updates by the day that I worked on them, rather than a single block. This means that the version history will start getting a lot longer, but it also means that it will be easier for me to keep track of what I've worked on, and for patrons who are getting incremental updates they'll have an easier time knowing what was updated since the last incremental. There are some pros and cons, but I think the former outweigh the latter overall.

Of course, this will also make it easier for you to tell when I slack off or take a day off. Which is a little embarrassing to think about, but oh well, I trust you guys not to read into it too much. We've come this far with you trusting my ability to get a decent amount of content generated in the course of a month, hopefully seeing the days I generated it won't make much difference.

Planned Incremental Update Schedule Change

Assuming that we hit the goal in September, a new update schedule will be implemented for the incremental updates.

Now, I know that in the past I'd talked about doing dailies, but after thinking about it, I decided that dailies probably wouldn't work very well. Some days I get less stuff done than others, after all, and it seems bothersome to go through all the trouble of packaging up a daily and releasing it when you might only get a handful of story passages for downloading it. It's a lot of bother on both our parts for not enough gain.

Instead the current plan is to schedule the releases on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, probably in the afternoons and evenings. That update schedule is better for guaranteeing that there's a little meat on the bones of every incremental and doesn't spam you with files to the point you get tired of seeing them and stop downloading them. (It also avoids filling up my file storage so fast.) This triples the amount of updates you get, though the price of your donation tier won't change.

Besides, I am a silly, sometimes braindead creature. If I tried to do dailies I'd just end up forgetting some days and that's not fair. But three times a week is a schedule even I can manage and remember.

New Features

I'm going to start looking to implement new features for both patrons and the general public. I have a number of them in mind, but I'm probably going to start looking to implement them gradually... when I think we have a good handle on one feature and it's been working smoothly for awhile, we'll move on to implementing the next.

As to what these features are and how they'll come about, well, that will be largely up to you. All patrons, from $1 up, will be allowed to vote for the next feature that will be implemented in or around Devious World. Of course all readers and followers will get to enjoy the results of the poll, but I wanted to give the patrons a little more boom for their buck, so they'll be the ones voting. (Besides, about time the $1 guys started getting a little something-something, huh?)

Moon Sugar

You wanna buy some? I mean, I'm not saying I have some, but, do you...?

Er, anyway! That's pretty much all for right now! Patrons, look for a poll to be going up soon!