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I try to work hard every week. Sometimes it doesn't go well, though: things pop up to drain my time, progress doesn't come easily, lots of work is spent on invisible parts of the game, etc.

Last week wasn't one of those weeks. I spent so much time in a state of flow, it felt fantastic. ^-^ Honestly, the biggest struggle was not getting overambitious by reminding myself that not every week can be like that and I shouldn't set more balls in motion than I'll be able to juggle later. But some of these projects I've been talking about, never quite finishing... well, they're closer and I feel good about the work I managed to do.

There's one big thing I didn't manage to do, though: think of a subtitle for the Crimson Gray mini-sequel. I haven't thus far, and I don't think I'm going to, so I'd like to solicit thoughts. It's about Lizzie and John in college, leading up to their wedding, so I considered some kind of subtitle related to those things. "Crimson Gray: College Days" sounds blah. "Crimson Gray: Wedding Bells" gives the wrong impression, I think. Dunno, haven't been happy with any ideas yet.

Anyway, please do give thoughts on that. Meanwhile, I think the TLS release went pretty well. I just put out a version 0.35.1 in the other thread, FYI. Because this one will take two weeks, I'll be giving it out to $1 backers next week, most likely, so look forward to that.

Comments

Jan Dietrich

Hmmm. Difficult. Maybe just "Crimson Gray: 2.0"? Jokes aside, i also struggle coming up with something that could be taken seriously. Anyway, good to see there's an update for 0.35.0. Need to play some TLS againg, was a little bit distracted by other things.

DukeLeto7

"A Darker Shade of Crimson Gray"

Nome

Crimson Gray: A Red Wedding, to reference it being from Lizzie's point of view? It doesn't really link up with the college part though.

sierralee

Haha, there are several potential allusions there, but I think the relevant one for a lot of people would be Fifty Shades of Grey, and I don't think Lizzie is into BDSM in that way... "Shade" is a good word, though. Would seriously consider "Wedding Shades" or "College Shades".

sierralee

It doesn't have to link up with everything, so that would be fine. It'll make people think of Game of Thrones, though...

Captain Hair

Insert several puns related to a woman's period here.

DukeLeto7

I may or may not have intended the Fifty Shades allusion...

DukeLeto7

Minor note. When Estaven appears in the Zirantian Tower during the Aram Lost variation, he says that the Doom King is doing something in Darghelon/Gheldaron, but the switch is based on which country was hit, NOT the one Simon went to.

Xenos DB

^ yes I noticed this as well

Censuur

Well for a subtitle my suggestion would be something along the lines of "shades of crimson", as a bit of a skew on the usual shades of gray, and it hints at the feature of Lily's perception warping the world around her a bit, or simply "shades of gray" could work in that it hints at the dubious-at-best morality of both our couple and the people they are 'against' Of course the difficulty being perhaps a resemblance to a rather terrible (imo) book by a similar name.

sierralee

Meaning that the lines are switched? If so, the Aramite version would be switched as well, I believe.

sierralee

Yeah, avoiding the title impression is something I'll rate as a fairly high priority. I will probably do something along these lines, but maybe for a hypothetical later game.

Bladestorm

Maybe Crimson Road since this is their path towards their wedding day. Now back to play 0.35.1.

Dubsington

Kinda hard to make suggestions since I don't know what the tone of the game is. I assume that you're doing something to illustrate that even "happily ever after" still means you actually have to slog through it, and there will be challenges. (Maybe I am wrong, and it's a spy-thriller-esque game along the lines of the last few scenes frmo the original game if you go the 'kidnapped' route.) Depending on how upbeat/downbeat the overall message is, maybe some of these might make sense; Crimson Gray: Ever and After Crimson Gray: Morning Colors Crimson Gray: Day By Day Crimson Gray: The Road Forward Crimson Gray: Binding

sierralee

This would be a nice idea, but I don't want to repeat "Crimson" too much. Thanks for the suggestion, though!

sierralee

Yes, you have the tone of the game right. Some interesting thoughts there, will have them in mind too!

Dubsington

BTW, you're smart to consciously try not to let a really good week shape your notion of realistic expectations. It's easy to do-- if *one* time, all the lights are green, there's no traffic, and the cops are nowhere to be seen and you make it to the airport in 60 minutes, for the rest of your life you'll think the airport is "an hour away" and be frustrated that it always takes you an hour fifteen.

Treant Balewood

'Crimson Gray: A Happily Ever After?' I haven't actually played the first one yet but when I read the post this popped into my head so...

Decanter

Please don't intend Fifty Shades allusions. None of SL's work deserves that.

sierralee

Not a bad title in general, but would fit a later game with them better than this one. Thanks for the suggestion, though!

Can't Wait

Without actually playing the game it's hard to make any meaningful suggestions. I know we get a perspective switch, which definitely is an interesting twist. I don't know how key an element it is in the new narrative though. Outside that, I've heard that it's about college and working towards marriage, but I don't know if the tone set for college or marriage is one of adventure or monotony. Do our old corporate buddies make any showing? Will avoiding or interacting with them be relevant? Am I just fishing for spoilers? MAYBE. Well, no harm in throwing out an idea. Crimson Gray: Gazing in the Haze - Invoking the idea of uncertainty in perspective and of the future. Alternatively "Piercing the Haze". Same basic idea, but implies more forward progress and hope

Hell Satan

Would not notice the 35.1 if you hadn't pointed it out thanks.

Hell Satan

SL are we gonna be able ti invest on the next update or are we going straight to stenai also how about the airship I have not militarize it I was planing to do it next update if I militarize it and it won't be used now due to the ongoing war I need to change my investment.

Hell Satan

I'm just replaying and just got the wedding with Janine can't believe I did not notice this grammar error before "Aka: I'm glad you see you finally get this Janine" I think "I'm glad to see you finally get this Janine"

DuckTogo

So from what I understand having played the game and reading your descriptions of the mini-sequel, I think I am right in assuming that Lizzie stands for Crimson and Protagonist-whose-name-I-forgot stands for Grey. Since their goal in the sequel is to go unnoticed and specifically for both of them to come closer to functioning normally in society I can only think of one thing: Crimson Grey: Hiding Colour

Rachnera

Some kind of subtitle suggesting the game is from Lizzie's point of view this time? Like "Eyes of Red"?

flareswrd

Maybe something like "Blissful days"? Because this sounds like Lizzie's rose colored happy days until the wedding. So something to get that across sounds like it might good.

Jens Mikli

Keep the colour theme going. Crimson Gray: Oversaturation or something to that effect. You could always do a poll and make it a community thing as well.

sierralee

You will have time to take a break before Stenai, but not enough time to invest. However, you WILL have time to invest again before the final stage of the war.

sierralee

Yeah, you're right about the color symbolism. This is an angle on the title I hadn't considered and I like it, thanks!

sierralee

Yeah, that's a good point, maybe it would be good to stress that angle. Thanks!

sierralee

Man, you guys are coming up with so many different angles on the title, I'm glad I asked!

sierralee

Okay... I absolutely love the sound of that, but I'm afraid that people might read it with another definition as "Crimson Gray: Too Much of It" - but seriously, I like the sound. I want to use this at some point, maybe in adjectival form as "Oversaturated X".

DukeLeto7

There was also a bit of Procul Harum...

Hell Satan

So no military airship for th war, damn got start over the investment.

Iamdexter

In the Hall of Order, I had invest the pool;talk to Elleani,Impaler ,Ogront and the imp officer,with 40 Tak'Kan score and no slum housing ,no Orcish Democracy and no orc diversification,I should have 12/15 vote, but at the end I have 13/16,not sure if it is a bug or not

SEEQYR

Maybe something like Crimson Gray: Contrasts, then? Or even Hue Hue Hue...if we're going the comedic route. Or something resembling "Fifty" Shades, if it's slightly more sexual. Or A Deeper Red. Or something like that.

WaxerRed

Did you start orc Diversification at the latest research? Because I think it counts if you picked it for the second round even if it is not yet done.

Iamdexter

No,it doesn't count,that orc just said sth like "too much talking,me vote no."Even if it counts,it should be 13/15,not 13/16.

DukeLeto7

We're assuming I haven't fucked up reading SL's code here for a start. I'd raise the issue on the wiki forum thread and wait for either Fulminato or Decanter to weigh in before bothering SL with it. Based on your description, and checking the event scripts again, the code should result in a vote of 12 - 5, so I'm a bit puzzled as to the reported behavior.

DukeLeto7

Actually scratch that, I think I've sassed it, as that hoopy frood Ford Prefect would say. There is a pretty simple bug. The number of boosters (0-2) you get to the size of the Tarran'Kan vote are determined by storing it in the temporary variable "Random Number". But that variable is not reset to zero before the calculation, and it had likely most recently been used to calculate the number of copy slots Trin has available before zapping the Aramite Priestess. It then gets incremented by 1 for the Orc Pools and it gets checked and found to be greater than or equal to 2 despite your not having invested in the slums, because it didn't start at 0. Easy fix for SL, so thanks for reporting it!

Lamsey

Crimson Grey: Till Death Do You Part?

sierralee

That is a dumb oversight, but it's fixed now!

sierralee

Hey! Anybody checking the comments! Steam just launched a new feature: creator pages. It seems to tie into the curator/groups features, so it's not perfect, but I still consider this a significant good thing. The main benefit is that it lets someone follow you as a creator instead of following individual games, which is much more useful given how Steam treats new games. If you're willing to have your Steam account associated with my games (EDIT: I don't think follows are public), please follow/join here: <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/developer/sierralee/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://store.steampowered.com/developer/sierralee/</a> <a href="https://steamcommunity.com/groups/sierralee" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://steamcommunity.com/groups/sierralee</a> Please let me know if anything looks wonky or there's something that can be improved! Right now I have to hope the thing is working, as the whole feature is in beta and I don't have anyone to test.

Bladestorm

looks good but for the group maybe have a link to your blog and a announcement tab where you can put news ahead of when you are going to release things.

DukeLeto7

Well, don't take this the wrong way, but we don't play TLS for your Ruby coding. :p

sierralee

Yeah, those are good thoughts. The creator page has lots of customization options, so I think a lot of things could be supported, but I've started simple.

Decanter

Follows/joins seem public to me; I can see Kenzurith, Iamdexter, and Bluestorm on there.

sierralee

Joins seem public - you can see the five members of the group. But I have ten followers and even on my end I don't see any way to get a list of them, so I presumed they were private. If I'm wrong, I'd like to know.

sierralee

Thanks for the resource, I'll look through it!

Decanter

Oh, I see, I didn't quite grasp the follow/join distinction here.

Bladestorm

So for the group the members can be seen, but for your curator page all I know is you have 10 followers.

Dubsington

Maybe a play on that then? They are "chasing after" a "happily ever after". "Ever Chasing After"? I like the idea but all the permutations I can think of sound stupid.

Dubsington

Word. Creators always seem so worried about spamming, that they err on the side of not telling you about stuff. Personally, I'd be thrilled to get a post (or message or whatever) about every dot release, since after all that's why I'm here.

sierralee

IIRC, this is a limitation of the way I set up the transport system.

sierralee

The other tricky part is that I don't want to get too close to my future project "Once Ever After" - I'll definitely be thinking along these lines, though.

DukeLeto7

I've always thought chartreuse was an inherently funny color.

Discomelon

Seeing as you are the content creator, I felt it necessary to ask you, would you be willing to permit a couple of people to stream TLS? I myself would be and i may talk one of my other friends into it as well. Please feel free to contact me via either steam(my steam name is "A Over-sized Flacid Crepe)" or discord.

onepot

If this happens, I'd like a link to the stream please. <3

DukeLeto7

FYI, and you may already know about this, some people are uploading the current TLS version to other sites. Here are two I found: <a href="https://fap-nation.com/the-last-sovereign-sierra-lee/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://fap-nation.com/the-last-sovereign-sierra-lee/</a> <a href="https://f95zone.com/threads/the-last-sovereign-v0-35-1-sierra-lee.616/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://f95zone.com/threads/the-last-sovereign-v0-35-1-sierra-lee.616/</a> It might be practicable to trace who the leaker is via IP information, but that's not really my area of expertise.

Rachnera

That's mostly pointless. Even if you manage to ban one leaker through IP tracing, they could subscribe again under another name and with another IP (by using any kind of VPN). Or someone else could leak it.

Ravellon

And the point of that will be what? Spending time to ineffectually fight Internet piracy? Has that ever worked?

sierralee

Unfortunately, there are multiple patrons leaking builds and have been for some time. I don't like seeing pirate sites make money off my game, but I don't think that's a battle I could win even with infinite resources. And considering I have finite energy, it's a battle I prefer not to fight.

DukeLeto7

Well, it makes me mad, anyway. :|

Darthjake

Crimson Gray: Shades of Summer?

Decanter

The whole VN is set during a semester of university, so...

sierralee

I think that has a really great sound, but Decanter makes a good point about the timing. I'd seriously consider using that title for some hypothetical other game, though.

DukeLeto7

Sounds like a Don Henley song...