Special Devlog : Out of Hiding

Hey there!

This devlog is available for free on my patreon right here : https://www.patreon.com/posts/87557685?pr=true

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Special Devlog : Out of hiding

Hey there, today is a bit of a special day, I wanted to take some time to explain a few things, talk things out of my mind and finally give proper news about my projects!

These news will mostly talk about me as an individual and dev, so skip to the end if you don't care about my sorry ass!

It has been more or less 18 month since the last public release, now I feel like I've got a lot to explain.

A bit over a year ago, I realized something, I wasn't satisfied with my life, I wasn't satisfied with ToU, I wasn't satisfied with everything, so I sought for alternatives, call it escapism, from both my personnal life and work, I was burnt out, I just felt like I was a bad dev, a bad artist, like I lost my touch.

Back then, I was more or less 21 / 22 years old, though at this time it was only the explosion of everything, in reality I feel like I've always felt off about my place in the world, I'm a young guy, even today, ideas and mindsets are bound to change with time and growth.

And ToU just struggled to fit the view I had of a good visual novel with time.

For a while, I considered perhaps putting it on hold for a few years.

I refused to abandon it, and well, I certainly won't abandon it, ever.

Tales of Unity is my creation, it's my child, it's flawed, it's sometimes cringy, but it's filled with heart and genuine attempts at being good, and you know, today I admit it, ToU is good, it's something I'm proud to mention, it's something I always talk with a lot of passion, I no longer feel afraid to say that yeah, I make lewds for a living!

I still think that a lot can be improved, I want to slowly modify chapter 1 to fit my new "style" of story telling, I want to change the first chapter to take it's time a bit more.

I'd say that now that I'm almost back in the mold, that I have a few reserves and dare I say fears.

The main one being, the fear of irrelevence.

I'm really scared of failing, of posting ToU's update, P:J's update and see that it brought nothing.

And while I don't doubt that these well, doubts are not grounded and have no fundations as consistency and quality is bound to bring people both new and old.

Still, it's something I fear.

And I feel like fearing failure is a good thing, I've grown into feeling pride for my work, Project: Jericho did help me grow as a person as well, I actually impressed myself, being able to work for hours on end on it.

Working on it was a good decision, and being able to switch on both projects brings a lot of diversity to my work and I'm really looking forward to release both 0.11 onward for ToU & Project: Jericho.

I plan on reworking patreon tiers again, I used to simply write anything to bring people in the fold, but I feel like offering arts that I end up never completing is a terrible Idea, and I think I'll make up for it through more diverse poll, I want to give a bit more power to the people that actually help me put food on the table, kink polls, character polls etc...

If you have suggestions as to what I could offer different tiers, feel free to send me a DM on patreon, discord or even post in the suggestion channel!

I'm here because I want game news GIVE ME game news Dev man!

Well on to game news.

Thanks to Greenarrow's work I was able to change the gallery COMPLETELY.

The gallery will now use a tag system allowing players to simply look for a character, a position and find anything related to it.

The only thing left for the update to be release ready is a few typo that need fixin' alongside more music tuning.

The Pre Release had a game breaking bug preventing the player from well, playing, that was fixed in the coming build don't worry!

The update should be out by the 11th of August 8PM PST.

0.11.1 should be out a few weeks later including a few chapter 1 changes, including new scenes, and event rewritten (Don't worry I won't break saves!)

Project: Jericho's 0.1 is planned to release for early October, the week of the 2nd.

I do want to say that ToU's update is rather short, while it's been a year and a half since the last public release, this release is about as lengthy as any other updates, perhaps a bit bigger though!

Project: Jericho will be much bigger, render wise it'll already be the equivalent of 3 ToU updates, the good news is that I was able to do that in about two to three month of work.

Considering three month is my new standard for each update, I think it's a pretty good estimation of quantity / quality / consistency for future updates as I plan on 0.12 to have the same length as Project: Jericho's 0.1!

I feel like I've been rambling enough!

Keep an eye out for the release, and for future projects, I hope that I may be able to impress you with the coming updates, thanks for sticking around

Happy birthday to you guys, it's ToU's fourth birthday, and while for now nothing is planned, I do want to offer you guys something to look forward to.

- Stronk