Progress Sneak Peek - December 14

I'm sorry for the delay (since the usual is on Mondays), but too many things have happened that have affected me directly and unfortunately have been accumulating until now, so I decided to write the weekly report now since I was mentally exhausted yesterday.

I know I shouldn't talk too much about my personal life (since it's boring) and that all this may sound like nonsense, but I feel I owe it mostly to those who have been supporting me for a long time, and it's something that has indirectly affected the development of Lucky Paradox these last months.

It's not something serious, but I think that right now I have reached a level of fatigue that I didn't expect to reach.

As some in the Discord server already know, I have a small pet rabbit which is already an old man (He is about to turn 11 years old, which is quite a lot for a dwarf bunny). A few months ago (between July and August) a cyst was found in his throat which prevented him from swallowing normally as it covered three quarters of his throat and hung down from the soft palate. Miraculously and thanks to the help of a great veterinarian it was possible to remove by surgery this cyst which seemed benign, however, when the biopsy was performed it was found to be malignant, so it was concluded that my bunny suffers from cancer, which causes the appearance of multiple cysts in soft areas.

For this reason, during all this time I have had to be taking care of him all the time, giving him medicines, making cures in his hind legs and cleaning his ears.

Being a very old rabbit, he has many problems that have been accumulating, such as chronic pain in his hips, irritation in one of his ears and some dental problems.

Since a few weeks ago his health has going down once again, and he seems to have some intestinal difficulties that prevent him from digesting his hay in a normal way, causing pain. So, the intense care that was necessary until a few weeks ago has intensified even more, as it is now necessary to give him some antibiotics and laxative to help his intestinal transit. I even have to wake up during the night to take care of him, because sometimes he has some difficulties or pains and I have to give him medicine, so sleeping 4 or 5 hours has become normal since November.

This whole process has been exhausting, since it is not only a great daily effort to help my little friend, but all these medical expenses are also quite expensive in my country, approximately 600 dollars a month between surgeries, medicines and exams. Something that has caused me a lot of frustration, since I have had to spend my savings that I had planned to invest in a new computer to work better, and the high prices of new graphics cards and other components do not help either (Inflation, low stock and resellers makes this worse).

I know that to many it will seem silly since he is only a rabbit and has his years, but for me, it is important, since I am a lonely person and this little buddy is like a family to me. I could never forgive myself to stop fighting, although I know that every day it is getting worse, and I cannot avoid the inevitable.

And yet, I feel that these last weeks something has broken inside me... I feel exhausted and sad... And this combined with some hate that I receive from inside because of Lucky Paradox, have made me lose a little of motivation but as the people says, "haters gonna hate". So, I know it affects me more of a timing thing than anything else.

Even those who know me from the Discord server can tell that lately I have been quieter than usual since October...

Why am I telling all this?

Well, not only because I needed to vent, but I've made the decision to shorten the Christmas update. Despite dedicating more than 60 hours a week to work on Lucky Paradox, I feel that my productivity has been impacted by my mood and fatigue.

My main idea was to have two Christmas stories for the next miniupdate, on the one hand, the Shogukuni one and another one for Prim and Layla, but I have decided to cut this second part and leave only the Shogukuni content so that I can complete the update within the date I had planned.

This doesn't mean that I haven't been working on Lucky Paradox, far from it, for me working on the game is almost a therapy, and it's something I do every day, even without taking days off for months now, but now I feel I need to stop for a few days or a week, although I think the right thing to do would be to do this after the Christmas update is released.

I need to sort out a ton of ideas I want to implement in the game, I promise next year will be much better with a huge amount of new features and new content for you to enjoy.

But I feel that currently my mood, and I am, is at its lowest... And I don't want those negative feelings to condition my work when it comes to writing or making new content.

But now, as for progress made this week.

As the Christmas content will be more compact, I'm going to expand the dragon story a bit to make it a more rounded and fun series of events. Shizuka and Kaede's costumes will be included as planned from the beginning. I've always liked to add little twists and fun details to the optional content. I also don't want to make a huge number of events, as in theory this optional story should span a week of time.

A second Christmas soundtrack has also been finished. This time I wanted something a little less typical and happy, but at the same time it connects with that Christmas feeling, it sounds a little weird, but when you listen to it, you will understand what I mean.

I have also contacted a new internet provider, and we have been working for a day to get the fiber optic installation done, this because the building I live in has an old wiring installation and an extra effort was needed. If everything goes well, from now on I will be able to work without so many disconnection problems, and it will be easier to upload Lucky Paradox updates, even from version 0.8 I could try to upload updates more frequently, so you can enjoy the early versions of the game.

Thanks to the new upload speed, I have decided to make a compressed version of Lucky Paradox, with a similar weight to the Android version. This version has a lower image quality than the normal game but has a weight of about a third of the original. If I see that the reception is good, I will continue to make compressed versions of the game in the future.

As for the particle system for the snow, I think I'll put it on hold for now, as it's been a real headache to make something functional and has become too time-consuming feature. If I can come up with a better idea, I will make the appropriate modifications, but I don't think it's a feature that should need so much time, if I must be honest, I don't think most people will even notice it.

Finally, I am going to remove the Discord integration from Lucky Paradox. At the beginning it was a feature that I was looking forward to, but in the long run it has become a recurring criticism (since many prefer to play this kind of games in privacy), it has caused some technical problems on some computers and generates problems when working on the Android version. In conclusion, the list of cons is much bigger than the list of pros. This has been time-consuming as I have to remove a lot of lines of code without ruining anything.

I must admit that it was a mistake, so from the next update this feature will no longer be in the game.

I'm sorry for how long this post has become, but I think it was necessary :(

Without further ado, I send you a big hug from afar and wish you all a beautiful week.

And see you soon with more news!