Public Release (Alpha 36) and year-end wrapup

I'll get to the (extremely long) wrapup and coming-year post presently, but first, obviously, let's get to the main event.

• And so we head into the last DW build of 2018. And we start with a few things of cherub Jamie and the married woman.
• Eric-as-Commander Erin can now agree to the Raptarran's demands in exchange for technological secrets.
• Eric-Ranma can hurry past or drain the bloated Kasumi in her quest to save Akane.
• Jamie now has answers to give when visiting Honesty's Reward.
• Holly can now untie one of the reindeer on her roof.
• Jamie can now agree to abandon the normal life and run off with Mary.
• A bit of a classic, Anubilis tormenting Rei (with donkey transformation).
• Some of the options under Maya and Jamie playing with the Magic Book have been removed for either being too difficult to convey in this medium, or for overlapping too much with other content. Speaking of which, "Magickez Mozt Forbihden" is now available.
• Cyan can now purchase the Lone Survivor costume from the clothing emporium.
• Some stuff for Cyan to do with Poison Alter in SIMFITE.
• Eric-as-Homura can now patrol the halls after taking the palace guard job.
• Cyan can now elect to get some toys to enhance her toying with Karen.
• Cyan can suggest she and her mother calm down after their blue candy fever.

December, as you might imagine, had a lot of interruptions. The house was very not-quiet with preparations for the holiday and there was just a lot to distract the mind. Some of these options don't have much to them, others have quite a bit though, so overall I think I did get a decent amount of content put out there. And plenty to build on through the next year.

The file is here.

And, speaking of the next year, let's take a look at the last one, just in... well I intended it to be brief but yikes.

Probably the biggest thing I want to talk about is that this year I decided to address one of the most consistent complaints about Devious World: its unfinished state. So after some friendly advice, I decided I was going to finish at least one whole storyline. To that end, I began (somewhat belatedly) what I intended to be "The Year of Cyan". I would only work on Cyan's paths, in the hopes that would be more likely to lead to finishing some. Eventually I abandoned this goal, for two reasons.

The first was that it wound up being counterproductive. I wound up fracturing Cyan's paths even more, partly because I was looking for excuses to write types of content with her that would have fit more easily and naturally for other characters. It felt both restrictive and like I wasn't actually getting anywhere, or bringing myself closer to my goal.

The second was that I realized, the goal was not going to make any difference to the people who typically make this complaint. Oh, some of them were being perfectly reasonable, but others were just being demanding or dismissive... there was very much an air to these complaints that I could wrap up an entire character if I "just sat down and did it", without at all understanding the scope of what they were saying. These people weren't going to care if I said "Well this particular storyline is done", they'd just snort and say "Well when is the game going to be done?"

And more than ever, I'm comfortable saying: Probably never. Devious World is an ongoing project and I see it being so for many years. I never intend to say "Eh good enough" and just wrap it up hastily to put it in some sort of final mode before dropping it entirely. I intend to keep working on it in some capacity for a long, long time. I think most of the people following me are comfortable with that... I know many hope that I'll get back to their favorite paths sooner rather than later, but given time it will probably happen, and in the meantime I think most will keep finding content they enjoy in the releases.

Speaking of my followers and supporters, this was the year where I actually met the goal. Way back when that was the "I might actually quit my job and do Devious World full time" sort of goal. Before my job quit me, eheh. But it was about what I was making there, and I hit it again this year. True to my word, I tried to treat Devious World like a full-time job and sit at my desk doing nothing but writing for eight hours a day...

... for about two days.

It quickly became apparent that it just wasn't feasible. Around the six hour mark my brain turned to mush and the quality of the writing started to dip. It became clear that I could not maintain that sort of pace. Still, I resolved to take Devious World much more seriously as far as spending time writing and not missing days. I couldn't put in eight hour days, but I could put in at least five days a week and serious effort rather than saying "eh good enough".

This was also the year I started looking into branching out more. I began an isekai novel, one which was also to be released to both patrons and eventually the public. Writing straightforward prose again was a refreshing experience for me, being able to focus on a narrative going one direction and telling a single story. (There were times where I actually had to remind myself I couldn't have the story go in two directions and let the audience decide which one to follow. That's how long I've been focusing my writing on CYOA.) Unfortunately my momentum on this project got derailed by another event.

2018 became the year that Devious World outgrew Twine. At thousands of passages and millions of words, the program simply began crashing every time I had more than a few passages open, sometimes taking large amounts of writing to Digital Hell with it. (The infamously buggy Win10 update probably didn't help.) My workflow on DW was completely and utterly impossible, so I realized what had to be done: Each character would require their own Twine file, and they'd all have to be compiled together using the "include" function.

And so began a month of drudgery. It was still refreshing in some ways... I was able to fix a lot of formatting and some typos, and review a lot of the older passages. (Sometimes realizing just why they'd languished for so long... Devious World has been a project for a long time, and come a long way, but the previous writing is still the way it was when I started out. It can be a little daunting as a writer to realize you need to pick up something that you wrote at a whole other skill level.) But mostly it was nearly eight hours a day of very careful copy-pasting, minor edits, checking things, and having Twine crash.

The whole thing, as said, killed the momentum I had going on my novel, and was enough of a rough break and mental numbing that I actually felt rusty and unfocused when I returned to Devious World. It was a bad time too, considering holiday interruptions, but hopefully I'm starting to get back on track. I don't know when the tentatively-titled "Dungeon Mistress" will be continued at this point... I don't want to leave it dead, but it's hard getting back into the mindset of it.

I do have another writing project in the works, and it's probably a bit more like Devious World in its concept and style. If I had to describe it, I'd probably say "This is most of what I like about my own game, done as a straightforward narrative." Those of you who enjoyed Cyan's Dark Sector 36 paths will probably like this, when I get it into a postable shape. It's not as action packed (at least the starting parts aren't), and not as bleak, but there's still a lot of the same feel to it I think. There's plenty of sex, plenty of odd characters both original and canon, maybe a bit of social commentary (little bit), and I think some decently serious character exploration. I'm hoping to have the first part done sometime next month, alternating working on it and DW.

And before I move into the next year, obviously I need to quickly address one thing: The abandonment of Tumblr. Tumblr, as I'm sure most of you have heard, decided to effectively ban all adult content on their site; though many thought this was in response to Apple removing it from their app store, it turned out to merely be the activation of a plan in the works for at least six months. Though various people assured me that the Devious World blog would not be particularly affected by this, for a number of reasons... practical, assumptive, moral... I decided that I was simply not going to be a part of that site anymore. I do miss it, being able to just belt out a quick post or even throw up a quick naughty image, but the way the site's going I just don't want to be there when the net gets widened. Maybe if Yahoo sells it to someone else I'll go back.

Anyway, let's look ahead to 2019, and see if I can be a little more succinct.

In 2019 I intend to continue to put in daily effort on Devious World, or at least some sort of writing for everyone's consumption. (More on that in a minute.) Five or six days a week, getting something substantive written every day. I want to make sure that you, my followers, have something substantial to partake in on a weekly/monthly basis. That is my absolute goal going forward. Lots of writing, more writing, many more writing.

That said, I also want to start diversifying. The experiments I've done in the past with taking short scene/story suggestions have been a success, and I think fairly fun for everyone involved. They give me a chance to write something different and you guys a chance to get some varied stuff, and in some cases some personally chosen stuff. So I'm likely going to continue trying to write side stories here and there, but also do more of these events. I have some ideas on creating interesting (and potentially wacky) ways for the followers to determine what sort of stories these might be, and I'll probably start out with one of these early in January to see how it goes.

Anyway! I think I'll finally wrap this up by saying, let's look forward to another year of hard work and hard... ahem... and I'll see you on the other side of this particular 365 days. Happy New Year!