Vaasrefs introduction.

Hey everyone.

For this post I'll let Vaasref do most of the talking.

Partly since I'm starting work on next months release already while Vaasref finishes up the slightly delayed but huge phone update.

I'd totally want to spend some time describing the phone update...

But since we're maybe just a few days from releasing it I thought it best to just let you guys experience it for yourselves as you play it.

That's all from me for now.

Cheers.
Jan.

Hi, Vaasref here.

Now that I’m settled down I think it’s time to introduce myself to you, let you know what I do on this project, what awesome flavors I added to that definitely savory newly-assembled mix.

I may warn you, some would say I’m an acquired taste, so if you didn’t like the introduction you may stop reading there, that’s fine, I can understand, I won’t hold it against you, mostly because I won’t know it, but also because I know that my annoyance potential is quite good.

So, let’s begin, shall we ?

I’m frenchman, a true Jack-of-all-Trades, but I tend to be more specialized on designing and programming software backend. I’m also at a gunsmithing school, but it’s not really helping here.

On this project I had to learn how to program in python and using Ren’Py, it wasn’t really easy for the later (thanks to a quite bad documentation) but anyway now I feel like I’m in a pretty good spot. I’m getting a good grasp on how Ren’Py is (not) working.

Overthinking describes quite well, well, how I think.

I like a job well done and will put the work it needs to be done. Interestingly while I’m easily one of the laziest person to live (I can fast for a day because I’m too lazy to eat) I can also code for more than 10 hours straight, don’t try to find a logic here I don’t think there is any.

And last tip if you want to keep me working just show support or interest and I’m pretty much tireless.

Why am I here ?

Good question, after all the $1000/month goal is not reached yet.

I jumped on this project after being intrigued by a bug that I didn’t understand (and I still don’t, but since I rewritten pretty much all the logic, it is not anymore). I tried to investigate and this is when I realized that the backend was in quite ugly shape. So I decided to contact Jan the spider about it and offer my help.

And here I am.

I hesitated tell you that, but since I brought the subject of funding.

I’m currently working pro bono on this project. And even if I would of course really appreciate getting paid for my work, I doesn’t count the hours working. Scratch that, I do count them now, I got into time tracking. But you got the message.

Anyway, if you could share the Patreon I would be even more grateful to you.

So what is that fabled flavor I bring ?

Well I tempted to say “sweat” but since that fetish is probably not the norm here, it wouldn’t qualify as awesome. I’ll also pass on “tears” and “blood”, but I had to quote them at least.

I started by revamping the code almost completely and worked on most part of the game improving things where I could. The nature of my work on this project makes me go over already “finished” part of the game, that allow me to spot oversights and little mistakes that slipped through the verifications and/or those that are too little to bother somebody without OCD. But I’m kinda here for that, so, I correct them.

I also think about everything that comes under my sight, and that tend to lead to a clogged idea box.

On the debugging side despite how it looks I fix most bugs. The thing is that I add features that tend to introduce a good amount of them, so even if I correct most of them, I’m afraid some inevitably make their way into the releases.

When it comes to the workflow, it’s quite obvious almost everything has changed.

My coming allowed Jan the spider (It’s a stupidly long pseudo don’t you think ? Did you know that it’s pronounced [jɑ̃n] like the first syllable of “yankee” ?) to focus on writing, modeling and staging scenes.

I introduced some productivity tools that were instrumental to the v0.30.2 and v0.30.3 as I was already working on the next version and we were still able to make minor versions.

At some point I would also like us to have an automated way to build and release new versions. That would also shield us from any Patreon vindictiveness against anything they want to censor. But mostly because as a developer I think it’s cool.

I tried to keep that post as structured as I could and in the same time keep the digression to a minimum. I’m not happy with the result but it wouldn’t be a decent introduction post without showing my skill in convolution and unfocus.

Update

Since I’m here, why not in the same time give you an update on how things are going ?

As explained last monday everything seem to move smoothly for the upcoming version.

Jan did the writing needed for the new content this weekend. He also took a pass at the the old phone content, of course, and some more scarce text lines missing or not working well with the changes made to the GUI.

He seem to have some issues writing the SMS text lines of the girls, I suggested to him to crossdress to gain a better insight of their point of view, but strangely he did not retain the idea.

For my part it’s quite simple (<= so not true), the “mostly ready” state the game logic was at the beginning of the past week meant that I have since doubled the amount of work done and features added. I would not want to brag (okay, I do want it a little, but only because I’m quite proud of myself) but I think that I added well over an update and half worth of features this week.

I achieved to balance my workload over backend and frontend well.

I must say that even if GUI is not my cup of tea (guess what tea I drink by the way, hint, it’s green and often paired with fresh mint), it’s quite rewarding to achieve a visually pleasing state and tweak it with so minute changes that in fine you take around 10 minutes to choose between 8% or 12% of opacity on the 2 pixel wide outline of the text to make it more readable.

On the backend, I still had that well know feeling when all the pieces come together and assemble, sometime in an unexpected yet elegant manner.

Due to the amount of changes made, and even if I’m quite confident, there might be some unplanned interactions leading to bugs, I hope nothing game-breaking.

Anyway whether it is bug report or feedback, your input will be more than ever important. You might see something that seem really obvious to you that we completely missed.

In the possibilities of minor bugs, the GUI can be quirky to put it nicely.