Release Schedule Update!

With over 40 releases of Ren'Py tools and tutorials under my belt, I've decided it's time to update my release schedule to be more sustainable going forward. When I started releasing things in summer 2023, I decided on a weekly schedule of releases because I had a ginormous backlog of tools and tutorials that were nearly ready to go which I kept putting off releasing (mostly because I'm a perfectionist; I felt like the tools and tutorials had to be absolutely perfect before I released them into the wild for scrutiny). We're talking stuff I'd had lying around for sometimes up to 3 or 4 years 😥

I'm happy to report I've been able to release a large chunk of that backlog! And while some bugs have been reported, I've been able to update and fix things too, which made my perfectionism less of a barrier to releasing future things too ✨ Of course, that does mean I don't have a large selection of things for quick cleaning up at the end of a week to release anymore. But fear not! I still have loads of ideas for future tools, and some already done which will just take additional time to clean up to release quality.

With all that in mind, I'm updating my release schedule with the goal to release at least one tool and one tutorial a month. I'd like to build up a bit of a backlog of completed releases again too, to help when things get busier. This pace will give me more time to work on bigger tools before a release also, of which I have a few in store! It'll hopefully also give me a bit of leeway so I can maintain and update my tools, which is a bigger and bigger task the more tools I have out there (re-testing all of them for 8.2 compatibility earlier this year took several days 💀).

Huge, huge thank you to all the people who've shared my tools and tutorials over these past months; it's been a delight seeing them used in projects, and it makes me happy seeing people say they understand the engine better after reading my tutorials. If you've used my tools in your project, do please drop a link in the comments or send it to me! I love to see how people use it (and it gives me new ideas for features sometimes too haha).

As a little bonus, here are a few things on my to-do for the future (in no particular order):

• Frame tool tutorial/quiz/demo - this will be a web build for playing around with the Frame Tool and better understanding how it works to create resizeable backgrounds, similar in purpose to the quizzes on my website.
• Lip flap tool + update to blinking code
• Updates to several tools - I'm hoping to update the Outline Shader this weekend with a few more blending options and a compatibility fix, and I have an update for the pronouns tool also.
• A pinch-zoom/scroll-to-zoom viewport. This one is done aside from some testing and polish for a release!
• A semi-secret tool that I've been spending ages and ages coding behind the scenes - it's so big that while the main code is done, I've been spending time writing up lots of documentation to accompany it. I'd also like to come up with an in-game tool to construct & preview the results in-engine and copy them into code for your project, similar to my Better Colorize shader + Colorize Tool combo.
• Improved SnowBlossom and particle effect code! I'd like to include some free-for-use images with it too, so if you or someone you know would be willing to do some simple small (under 150px, <15 frames) frame animations like a raindrop hitting a hard surface, please get in touch. You can email me at contact@feniksdev.com. I'm willing to pay for the images to be CC0 or CC-by, since I'd like it to be available for as many developers to use as possible.
• + many, many more ideas and partially-completed tools I still have.

I hope you'll look forward to it! Cheers to much more game development ✨