Lord of the Things, Return of the Queen (Patreon)

not that i really fancy myself a queen or anything but king fits even worse
and i'm not about the jedi life...

i got back in yesterday and took some time to unwind. moderate success. the trip was a little more stressful than i (should have) anticipated, but i don't regret going or anything. Must Always Be Done. i'd say i'm glad to be back home where i have control over my life, but only the first part of that is true. in my time away i have realized my mother is even more chaotic than i already thought, which contrasts sharply with what i learn when i am here that my grandmother is umbridge levels of orderly, so i actually don't even know what to believe anymore and i have returned very confused.

but i missed you so that's what matters.

can't say too much got done while i was gone, but i suppose that's hexpected. i have some pictures that i'll actually talk about and post tomorrow (as i have decided upon writing this and realizing that it would take a full post) instead of today, since i am sure you are all very curious about the state of testing.

by now, each of the testers has pretty much finished the episode, including those who played the game through from the beginning. they could be speed runners, i tells ya. so the good news is not too many new bugs will be coming in. the bad news is the the current condition of the game as considered against our reported bugs:

it's shit

...this is probably going to be a recurring theme, me saying after every test everything is awful, even if it is really not that bad, because boy does it feel bad "everything is fixed" she dares to think "there could not possibly be anymore problems"
but there are.
there always are.
and after five years of this you think she'd learn that.
she will not.

the biggest problem with these tests is the number of things that are script bugs. the problem with script bugs is that marcello is much, much better equipped to fix them than i am (since he wrote most of them) (that sounds like i'm blaming him but no that's just how things go, there will always be oversights and typos no matter who does it). unfortunately marcello is a Busy Boi so he can only get to one or two things a day. 

for everything that is not a script bug, i can probably take care of them all in a single day or less. they're easy peasy. i don't care about them. but that just leaves the script things. 

i'm pretty adverse to releasing or even pushing testing forward when shit is so brokilydokily. so let's strike that off our table of options. of course i solve everything in the scripts i immediately know how to, and make sure the other issues are organized and replicated. from there i can either: 

• just prance forward to let marcello do his thing over whatever time he has to do it while i work on things for future episodes or starlight
• or fall back and help him with his work, despite it taking me considerably longer to do it

the first option reduces development times for the long run. the second option gets you guys E17 as soon as possible. 

for the past several weeks, my approach has been the second option because someone made some very naive ambitious post saying that each testing wave would only last a week and ha ha wasn't that silly. but also, i did not want to burden marcello with that pressure, and also there is some stubborn part of me that feels just letting him handle it is admitting defeat, as if i can't do it myself. well i can. and without him i would have to. but marcello == true, it's inefficient.

after talking to marcello about it last night, i'm switching my focus to the first option. he seems to be fine with it, and it's better for the long term anyway. it means maybe there's more of a wait for you guys. sorry for that. less of a wait for other things in the future. all right (also way more interesting for me tbh).

so. charging forward again. let's go. of course i do still have to deal with the internal bugs first, but i'm not afraid of them. lemme at 'em. tomorrow i'll tell you about what kind of problems we're looking at-- wait i already said something for tomorrow. um.
tomorrow is a mysterious mystery. not even atua knows what will happen.