Hello my friends

As you know, I released an update to my visual novel (VN) last week.

I’m happy with the reception, though I would have liked more people to have experienced it. I know fewer people are familiar with the show today than in the past, especially with the growth of streaming, but it is still surprisingly popular today. More popular if like me, your parents were too cheap to get cable tv.

Progress:

I have about 1/6 of the story written, and placed into the visual novel… assuming it will be the same length the previous update was. That includes the code, and places for me to place the images. I actually had this part pre-written, so it was fairly quick to add in. I just needed to rewrite it in parts, clean it up for Ren’Py, and add in some code to make things work.

I have more pre-written story line that will be included in the upcoming update, so that will help a little with speed.

I will need to write the connecting story lines, and sections. I have most of the story in my head, I just need to flesh it out.

I was informed that converting the images to webp had made the images fuzzy, at least to one person. I figured I should convert the images at a better quality. This should hopefully be only a couple days of work.

Changes Coming (TLDR below if you want to skip):

Yes, I’m still working on this VN, but there is the potential for delays.

Events have caused us to deplete our savings quicker than I had hoped. So, I am taking the horrible action of getting a part time job.

The reasons are medically related, and this caused a big reduction in our income.

When I started this journey, I knew it would be an uphill battle. I also knew that most people just never get to the point that creating VNs is enough to give them a living. But I had an “ace up my sleeve”. Actually a few.

Years of saving money gave us savings to draw upon. I also created a few alternative sources of income, that while not significant, still helped cut the amounts we were drawing from our savings.

The third was my wife. The person I called my “Sugar Mama”, since she was willing to support me. But now she isn’t able to work, so her income is less than half of what it was.

I do want to make it clear that this is not any sort of a “sob story”. I mean the gist of it is that I need to get a job, and it will result in a reduction in my productivity on this VN.

I do not have any issue with getting a job, I just have an issue with how this will affect the speed of my updates.

Plans and goals:

My goal was to get the next update out about 3 months after the last. That would be a month and a half quicker than the first update.

I decided to keep that goal, but making sure people are aware that I have a new impediment to working on this. But I am going to try to limit the part time job to 20 hours a week, including commuting.

Another potential drag on my time is that I may be working on improving those alternative sources of income. This will take much less time, but it will still take up some time.

Final Thoughts… TLDR

1/6 of the writing and coding is done.

I am both speeding up due to improved skill, and slowing down because I need a part time job.

I don’t want a job because I’m a lazy bum.

I believe I can still hit my goal of 3 months from the last update... I hope.

As always, enjoy life.