End-of-month progress report at the beginning of the month (Patreon)

I have had a productive month. I was out of town for a week, rendering was on hold, but I kept writing, more than 50 pages for Rise were written - some of this was already for chapter 11, some of it was a revision of chapter 10 (corrections, better elaboration of some details, etc.) In the meantime, I've also made progress with the programming part, as a result of which the "Rick-Cora travels" thread is now fully playable (not finished yet, because it lacks pictures, animations, and all the English text), and the "Cora travels alone" part will be fully playable soon.

In light of this, I will change the release of the chapter so that it is not split into parts, but will again be an Alpha version. In fact, several alpha versions until the full chapter is completed. The first Alpha will be released when I finish the "Rick-Cora Travels" and "Cora Travels Alone" storylines (as these two got the most votes). More on this later, when I see how things are going.

People often ask me (rightly) what is taking so long. Well, again, I can only say that the reason it's going so slowly is because it's a very big chapter. Perhaps the best way to think of it is that it is actually five or six chapters in one. Whereas in previous updates there was usually one story thread, Rick's (in one case Cora's), and that one thread had alternatives and the smaller story of the other character wedged into it, in Chapter 10 each thread is as big as a previous chapter in itself. Take an example. Below is a picture from each of the following threads.

Rick is travelling with Cora:

Beth is traveling with Cora, and Rick went over to Jake's:

Beth is traveling with Cora and Rick didn't go over to Jake's:

Someone else is traveling with Cora or going alone and Rick went over to Jake's

Someone else is traveling with Cora or going alone and Rick didn't go over to Jake's:

And this is just five versions of one image, but the whole scene was done in five versions, although depending on the settings, there were images that I could use for more than one version. And there are a lot of scenes that I have to do in 4-5-6 versions, not to mention that some of the earlier events require extra scenes. For example, if Rick has gone over to Jake's but is not travelling with Cora, in some cases he will not wake up (i.e. he will not be seen in the goodbye scene above). However, Cora will still say goodbye to him:

Another glaring example is that if Rick hasn't gone over, Cora talks to Jake separately in the morning about what happened last night (at least in one version):

And that's just the beginning of the chapter, the whole chapter is full of scenes of which there are 4-5, sometimes 6 versions. And of course I also have to program it to always start the right scene, which was a problem sometimes. Sometimes I got an error message, sometimes I set up the wrong logical sequence, so Rick woke up with Cora even when he didn't go over to Jake's. So that's why this chapter is going so slowly.

In addition, I often feel that I'm not making progress on these, which causes a certain amount of apathy. It's not good for my work ethic either. Fortunately, Distant Horizon is now getting some attention again, which has broken me out of this apathy.

Speaking of Distant Horizon, the new update is coming along nicely, even with the work on Rise, I'm sure it will be released in the second half of September. Again, it won't be a long, but it will be a full episode.

So, that's it for now. Distant Horizon v0.6 arrives in the second half of September and Rise of the Crime Lord Chapter 10 ALPHA 1 as soon as it's ready.

I would like to thank everyone, but especially my patrons, for their patience and support. I know I'm not the fastest developer, but believe me, I'm doing my best to be as fast as possible. But I still don't want to be in a hurry at the expense of quality, and I won't release something I'm not happy with.

Well, until the next post, take care of yourself and your loved ones, and as always, feel free to contact me here or on Discord.