The game is essentially finished, now. My testers have played it and pointed out one glitch. And I've played it again from the early routes and noticed a few quirks I didn't like. So I'll be ironing those out, but it hopefully won't take long.
My plan is to release Elemental on itch.io for free on Thanksgiving, and it will be free for 2 days (Thanksgiving and Black Friday) as a gift. On the Saturday after Thanksgiving (which happens to be my birthday) it will go to a regular price of $2.99
So to summarize: Elemental: Seven Minutes in Heaven will be released for free for 2 days starting November 24, 2016. November 26, the sale ends.
I'll also be releasing it on dlsite (so long as nothing's changed since I looked up requirements), possibly gog.com, and the google play store (so long as I iron out the final kinks...).
Look forward to it, guys~! =D
Sorry I haven't posted any recent updates. There's been quite a lot going on for all of us, not just me.
On the upside, my boyfriend is back in the states for a month-long visit. We went out with his friends to do some sightseeing in Chicago. Got to go Chinatown for the first time, though it was late when we got there, so not much sightseeing done. And he got to go to an aquarium for the first time.
Now on the downside... the night we stayed in the hotel and I had terrible sleep and when I woke up, I was greeted with the results of the election... To make make worse, his friend kept talking about how this was going to usher in the Apocalypse and mind sleep deprived mind went into panic mode. I was having thoughts like "Am I safe? Am I going to get raped as a female? Am I going to be lynched by the KKK? Is the healthcare I was so happy to have renewed going to be gone? Is everything all in vain? Inflation is going to happen again and I can't afford to live... I'm going to ACTUALLY die in a gutter..."
And from then on, it was a bit difficult to enjoy the trip to the aquarium and I was quite irritable and distraught... I had work the following day and walked into work like a zombie... I nearly broke down in a sobbing fit as soon as I walked onto the floor. A few tears leaked out, but I managed to suck the rest back in and force myself to get work done. I'd contemplated calling off, but I'm glad I went in because I think the exercise helped snap me out of my funk and brought me back to level ground. It felt like I woke up from one of those nightmares where you wake up, but you discover you're still in the nightmare. However when you finally wake up, you're tentative, but ultimately relieved to be over the horror and panic. There's probably some negativity in the future, but I ultimately made it past that ravine...
Cut to today... I noticed I had an Android upgrade waiting on my phone. I was in the middle of play the My Little Pony game (by Gameloft) trying to collect shard for one of the latest competitions. So I think, "I'll just upgrade my phone and get back to it while I also work on my own game." Well, it took maybe 15-30 minutes to upgrade. When I went to go back into my game, I noticed it wasn't there... Everything else was, just that one game was missing. I've been playing this game every day since I got it about 3 months ago (about the same time I got this phone, my FIRST smartphone) so I've made it very far in the game (I think I was about level 80, my name was Apple Star). So anyway, I decide to redownload it since it's still in my google play list. I try opening it and it won't load or it crashed. So I restarted my phone and on the second try it loaded... only to show that my entire progress was reset to the very beginning. I'm talking when you first start the game "Enter Your Age and Gender" beginning. I was devastated... Not only did I put in a lot of time and effort, but I also spent almost $100 in gems and bundles to get where I was.
I sent off a form to Gameloft (after trying the support email which told me to go back to the website I was on that didn't have my issue in their list...) and I'm still waiting for a reply. I recently sent a form with a concern on the quests in the crystal empire and the particular ones I'm on apparently you can only collect shard from the shops for. That was a bummer but not the end of the world. But this is a really distressing thing... And my birthday's right around the corner (Saturday after Thanksgiving) so they just gave me a free pony. Everything's gone =(
My boyfriend contacted me prior to this event (I'd been passed out after having a beer after work and chores) saying he was worried and he missed me and didn't want me to think he was ignoring me. Which made me feel bad because it seemed more like the opposite. I wasn't ignoring, but self medicating through alcohol (which I never do... the beer was really gross anyway, so I wont' do that again, not with beer, anyway). I should've sent him a message to let him know I was gonna do that before I did so he wouldn't worry too much...
Anywho after spending most of today being upset and low, he got back to me and I may have bummed him out a bit. I say that, but he would tell me I hadn't, which is most likely true because I tend to overworry. After leaving the call to force myself to eat, I decided I wasn't hungry and called him back. We had a discussion and he sorta snapped me out of thing and told me I should work on my game since I'm very close to completing it.
So to more good news. The only thing I have left to do on Elemental is create a credits sequence. Then I'll be sending it to my beta testers to make sure there aren't any more game-breaking problems and if all goes well, I'll be putting it up on itch.io for free for 3 days. If the timing's right, I'll make those 3 days the days before my birthday and on my birthday, it will go to its regular price of $2.99. I really do need to earn more money, hopefully this will give me some pocket change. On to of that, it's a slight launching board to regenerate interest in my artwork =w= I'm trying to hard to hold on and move forward in my craft, so I hope things go well. They don't have to make me rich, but if things just get marginally better, this year's worth of work will have been worth something... One day I want to see drove of fan art based on my characters =QwQ= Then I'll feel like I affect people <3
Okay, gonna go eat some chili and try not to cry. Sorry for the long post =^^;= Just wanted to let everyone know I'm still alive and what's up. Thanks for reading this far if you did, I appreciate the time taken =QuQ= *starting to cry anyway*
Realized I haven't been visiting or keeping my theO crowd posted on the game's progress XD;
So all the art assets are done (give or take some facial expressions I keep adding in the make things make more sense) and I've more or less finished coding 6 of the 14 routes. Trying my best to finish all the main stuff before the 3rd because my boyfriend is coming back for a visit =D And with him back in town, I probably won't get much done XD; J/k j/k X3
Re-discovering that coding leads to debugging XD And I'm glad that modern-day programs (well, as opposed to maybe 20 years ago...) tell you what line your error is on. Most of the time, anyway. Why I usually write a few lines then test, but since I'm getting the hang of it, I've been writing the whole route then de-tangling everything in one test run. Granted, there will probably still be minor hiccups in the final product that I might not be able to work out, but I don't think it'll be game-breaking, so I won't worry too badly on that. It's my first game, after all =3
Time to wind down for the night and tomorrow there's work and after work, more route coding X3 Yaaay~ I really wanna get this done and get it out into the world cuz I can't keep all the hawtness to myself~ =eUe=
A small sneak peek XD Also, that line should pretty much be the motto of the entire game XD
Seeing as how it's the first day of autumn, it's safe to say my original Summer release deadline for Elemental is out of the question. There were a couple weeks that really pushed my progress back. (72-hour migraine, work, wedding, and hangover XD)
Since the release is no longer happening in summer, I decided to not set a new deadline and just continue working until it's done. Then I'll set a release date that'll give my beta testers some time to play it and work out any kinks I may have missed.
I have to say, doing this gives me a new POV on game developers and why they push back deadlines as much as they do. They are also human and things happen in life to distract and derail you from progress. So I forgive that even more, now. It wasn't a huge deal before, though, but y'know. Understanding. And considering I'm not even doing as intricate coding as some game-makers do, it's really a surprise any video game gets done at all XD; Then again, they have staff of tens or hundreds of people and this is just me.
3-5 months may have been ambitious, especially considering my propensity to get distracted or having trouble getting started in the first place.
I am rambling... Bottom line is, Elemental IS progressing. I just need to finish 7 more CGs and maybe makes some tweaks to a few sprites. Then I can start putting my assets into the game. Good luck to me ='w'=-b
Short story is: I tried to fix my Wacom tablet pen and ended up breaking it.
Slightly longer story: I took it apart because all of a sudden, the computer wasn't responding to clicks as well. I had to really tap hard to get it to register. I'd taken it apart before, so I thought maybe something was loose. I didn't see anything and put it back together. Still acting weird. Took it apart, looking at each piece and decided I would just deal with it, but when I tried to put it back into the sheathe, it got stuck... Then I tried to pull it out and... A metal piece flew out and a wire came loose. And it's stuck in there, won't budge...
I was like "No... NO NO!" and freaking out and saying "Why did I do that...? WHY DID I DO THAT?!"
Solution: I've had Intuosso for about 4 years and bought him used, so it was about time for an upgrade. At first I was thinking of sticking with Wacom because their pens don't require batteries like other tablets do. But after going back and doing more research, I found an extremely good contender to Wacom in XP-Pen. The one I'm looking at is an XP_Pen Star 04 and has 8GB of storage built into the tablet, so I could save my work directly to it to switch between computers. That is SO much better than having to transfer my files to my external hard drive.
My boyfriend wanted to jump right on ordering me a new pen for my Intuos4 (Which is about $65...) I figured, if I'm going to spend that much, I may as well get a better one. I convinced him not to buy it and to wait until morning and we could talk it over (He's in Thailand and I'm in the US, so there's a 12-hour time difference between us) But he said if he didn't hear from me, he was gonna buy it. I'm worried he already did. I really want this other tablet, but if he got me the pen, I can't justify getting the tablet. He's not answering my messages, tho... =T
Hopefully he gets back to me before I go to bed. I wanna hurry and order this tablet so I can work more efficiently. In the meantime, my brother had my old Bamboo Fun tablet, so I'm using that to work on CGs, though it also has an issue with the tapping. Better than nothing at all, though.
