Sunday, April 22, 2018

Veins' thoughts

The good news:
Titan is coming to my country for the Summer. We would be house-mates and try to finish the game once and for all. Well, we have to wait for his visa to arrive and book tickets and deal with all that procedural crap that wastes time. But this is a huge step toward finishing. Coming from America to Europe for 2 months (or more) requires huge sacrifices but this had to be done. Titan ended up being completely unreliable for the past 2 years due to personal issues and this was the only way to deal with the game's crisis. I hope that he will actually manage to come... I won't believe it until I see him in person!

The bad news:
It's stuff you already know. No updates, no Beta, nothing. We got some messages in the last post, of people tired of waiting. I know, I feel the same way. Actually even more so, because I'm here every single day talking to Titan, asking him for updates. He is constantly a few hours away from finishing the Beta. But always something happens. On March 1st he told me he wants 5 hours to finish it. Today, 52 days later.... oh man, it feels ridiculous to even continue that sentence, so I won't! Fuck my fucking life.....

Titan found new 2 level designers and I also found new 2 level designers (currently we only got 1 active designer right now). All of them are waiting on Titan to finish the Beta. His work is pilling up, and we need those designers to finish levels so that when he comes here (where his time would be limited), we wont be wasting time waiting for the levels to be done!

I write all that here, not just because we promised transparency, but as a desperate way of mine to force Titan to work. Titan knows all that, but writing all that here it's like having all my thoughts gathered. I have to believe that he does everything in his power to get shit done, but it's obviously not enough. We lose fans, we lose support, we lose faith in ourselves. Apart from that, the rushed work shows. I want the game to be better, but if there is no time to finish a basic fucking beta, then how can there be any time to do small fixes that really matter?

And it's more than that. level designers are waiting on us, people who love the game are waiting on us. The partnership between me and Titan gets shaky... when he returns to America, surely he will return to the current pace of doing things. And then, how can I trust him on some new project? At this moment, I don't see that happening. I hope I'm wrong. I may find other partners or I may learn programing and make games on my own... I don't know. But there are options.

The future seems uncertain. Once more, it all depends on Titan. I hope he comes to my country as he promised (I can't be sure of anything anymore). When he comes, we work hard. When it is time for him to leave... then we reevaluate the situation. Fuck, if this fails.. I'm running out of ideas to save this project. Worst comes to worst, I would have to find a legit company to finish the game. But that entails a whole new world of risks, management and expenses, and it would be a nightmare to handle. But I need to bury all that for now and stay positive as Titan plans his trip here.

The ugly news:
You won't like it but I have no art or updates for the game this month. I took a small break from MoGi, to avoid getting mad on waiting for things to happen. Also it bothered me that there were only 1 or 2 comments on the Succubus sex animation (which was highly anticipated), and on the Wild West game. Frustrated from all that, and my personal life as well, and tired of waiting on others to make games, I decided to make a game on my own... a game that I started in a Game Jam 2 years ago, with a team of four (supposedly) award-winning programmers. They were utterly useless and abandoned the project, so I never got to finish it until now. I haven't done any Ucogi games in years, so yeah, this game is about Ucogi's first story. I made this game to fix my mood, and feel that I finally finished a damn platform game! I just have to find some fitting music to complete it.



I understand that this may be a game that you don't care about, because it's an asexual game about Chibi Ucogi. But if you think about it, in the long-run these are actually good news. I proved to myself that I can make a game on my own, and that if I ever want to go solo and make platform games with story, cut-scenes and riddles, I fucking can! (I just need to learn a new program to do games, because Flash gaming is kinda dead).