Update 0.62

Today we will share with you our thoughts about how to eat your own tail.

This is more of a flood topic than anything else.

Oddly enough, we are still looking for a programmer. We met two more people, which brought the number of "was programmer" to "6". At this rate, the number of programmers that are left can even surpass the number of actors. It is the actors who most often abandon their work halfway. In particular, our voiceover is ready, and more than 20 people took part in it, but about the same number dropped out of the project for various reasons.

Before we move on to Ouroboros, who bites his tail in the person of our studio, let me openly list some of the problems that we had with programmers. Perhaps this information will be useful to young developers.

1) Our first programmer left in a very good spirit and even with a recommendation from the management. This young guy worked on the Renpay engine, but after a couple of days of work he admitted that he would not be able to implement what we had planned. Mainly due to lack of experience.

2) Our second programmer will receive the greatest honor. He worked on Unity, as we originally planned. We worked with him for more than a year, and it was this person who created the current alpha version. Unfortunately, it was not finished and took too long to make. The programmer left due to serious physical injuries.

3) The third programmer decided to take up the Renpay version again. Our studio is primarily interested in quality and giving people experience, so the engine itself is not so important to us. This was the first American we worked with. He himself offered his help, but a day later, after personal assembly instructions were written for him, he left. Oddly enough, both he and our management can be blamed for his departure. The man did not provide any results, but at the same time he managed to insult the administration. To make things less dirty here, we won't go into details. And the manuals that took us extra time for him will still be useful to us.

4) The fourth programmer left the most disgusting feeling behind. Whoever you work for and whoever you help, for money or for free, the worst thing you can do is leave your comrades in the dark. A certain "Thomas" who has been working on unity "for more than 20 years" took on the project, and even reported fixing one bug from the very beginning. We communicated with him for a week, and even tolerated his leisurely "work". However, in this week was his birthday aka minus three days, then our request to upload the project to Git and… the man simply disappeared. As a result, he did not do or give us anything. He still hasn't read the latest messages. It was terribly ugly jesture from his side.

Whatever happens, you need to have no respect for others and yourself, so as not to at least write "I will not do this". Communicate something to people, and then just remain silent, refusing to answer for your words. At best, this can only be forgiven for a woman. If you understand what I mean. A man, in my understanding, cannot allow himself such behavior. Running away from problems is low.

Whatever the reasons for his disappearance, it was somehow possible to warn us about it in advance.

5) Our fifth programmer promised to take on a project on Unity. The guy dreams of becoming a freelancer. Of course, we give a chance even to the most inexperienced people. This time it was a guy from India. We gave him a raw alpha version to test his abilities. Because of the way he communicated, it was clear in advance that the matter would not go far with him. But who knows? Maybe we were wrong. Instead of uploading the project to Git, the guy created a project on the Unity website itself and for two days could not upload the alpha even there (by the way, anyone can do this task, even without being a programmer). Then followed a long correspondence from the category

- Can you upload?

- I need pizza.

- Can you put the animation here?

- I need more time.

- Have you worked with GitHub?

- My name is Dickie.

And so on. This dialogue was more like mockery than work, I could hardly understand anything. I don't know why this person didn't find a job in his country or didn't learn the language properly, if he is looking for a job in it. In the end, we refused to work with him after a few days. The work had not even begun and it is impossible to communicate with such people.

6) And finally, our sixth programmer, he is just a kind 17-year-old guy who wanted to help, but refused when find out the scale of the work. We do not even have any complaints about him, let him gain experience and so on.

In the course of the above, I would like to write the following. Our studio has been working with people for more than five years now, but to this day we discover various… rather unusual and new things in this industry. The most important thing, of course, is the human factor. People want everything and for free. People do not like to work but want money. People do not like responsibility, but want to gain experience. People do not have knowledge, but take on overwhelming work. People are incompetent and ill-mannered. And, by the way, I am not saying this as something bad. It is rather natural.

If our studio were more competent, we would better filter out everyone who works with us. At the beginning of our work, we met many more such people, because the policy of "give everyone a chance" is more than humane.

We DO want to believe in people, and even we were once in the place of those from whom experience or impossible tasks were required. We were also not once told, that people would not give us work without experience. But today we are a little different.

Today, "Ray Out" gives everyone the opportunity to prove themselves. Even if it is difficult.

This evening, I logged into Steam and once again emphasized… how ambitious our project is with this novel.

People are doing great things with a much smaller scope and a much larger team. In particular, I came across a great novel and read about what it has. It literally says that it has more than 10 characters, 5 variations of endings, more than 20 backgrounds and no voice acting. This is a popular new novel like game, from a small studio of 10 people. It is completely 2D and side-view. It has no animation except for the animation of walking from right to left.

Now let's take our novel. We have more than 20 characters, we have more than 20 endings, we have more than 100 backgrounds, we have voice acting for everything including folklore, we have animation in the form of videos and so on. We have a menu wallpaper and the interface changes depending on different things. We have… oh, guys, do you understand what I'm getting at?

This is more than 10 times more material, with three times fewer people working on it. This is… An unbearable, I would even say heroic burden.

What was I thinking when I was planning such a large-scale and long-term project, with such a small team?

So, here comes the snake biting its tail. In the end, almost everything is ready for the novel except for the software part (PROGRAAAMERS! Why are they so Hard on us?), but we don't even have a working demo version on our hands.

While we are looking for a programmer, I have to think carefully about what's what. Maybe we don't have a large fan base, but nevertheless… perhaps we should finish the demo version, freeze the project until better times and make something smaller, or at least cut the volume of everything that is there in half.

Update 0.64

Very good news are coming, but in order not to scare them away, we will not announce them just yet. Meanwhile, the Slavic people continue to disappoint us to this day… Therefore, having described the big fish, today we will share with you the work to which we have devoted our recent time. This work consists of translating, adapting, and finalizing the routes, or more precisely, "branches."

We have already shown you our map before, but only today we decided to talk about it in a little more detail. The reason for this was, of course, the huge amount of work done. Moreover, the finalization of the routes is still ongoing. To make it clearer to you, this huge schedule is needed first of all so that when developing various choices and consequences, romantic connections, and so on — we do not get confused in what is happening up there. Naturally, for players or readers of our "Town," this graphic will not be useful because you simply will not see it.

It is the same as throwing you a walkthrough. And yet, without these graphs, the novel would have acquired many plot dead ends, contextual inconsistencies, and so on. To put it even more simply, without such a graph for each game day and each route separately, Luke Skywalker would never have learned the history of his family.

And now a little more specifics, which can be seen in the screenshots. In particular, we have demonstrated DP and TP. These are the two main types of points with which the player will build his personality.

Some may decide that this is all about romance, about the question of morality, like whether you are bad or good, but… this is not the case here. Our approach to development was initially somewhat more complex and more focused on you as a person than on your morality and love preferences. DP, roughly speaking, speaks about your constructive approach to everything you see, while TP, on the contrary, characterizes you as a person who is led through life by emotions. These are only two main characteristics out of four, but we are not really here to discuss them. By choosing one or another answer, each player builds His Identity.

Then, why do you have a portrait of Molly on the screenshot, you ask? What does this character have to do with your Identity? It's very simple.

Communicating with different characters, you show your character as he is. You build him with bricks. However, with all your "personal" character building, there are other people in the town of Akuṇagi, of course. Our novel is not a game where every NPC will adapt to you. Like Prise to the HOLY player! As a metter of fact, we can't see them as NPC for a while now. And… we are building World, and not your personal Castle here.People can disagree with you.

We have already talked about this several times. Your choices serve not only for you but also to show youre Identity to others. Thus, if our Molly receives a DP or TP answer from you, her reaction will not be the only one that has variations. She will make a certain conclusion about you, which can lead to a certain ending; include a romance with her or exclude it.

After all of the above, imagine that we are not talking about One Choice at all. We are talking about a whole series of choices and decisions, building a characters, and You as a Player in different routes for different people with… different reactions for youre personality and etc.

Finally, you can notice the black figure on the screens. These pictures symbolize personal routes in our graphs. Those routes that will be detached from the plot but will have an exclusively personal, not at all romantic Insides. Moreover, here I would like to add that the other routes are not necessarily romantic… By the way, it would also be necessary to remind you that such a system with the construction of the player as a person, characteristic points, and so on sets you for quite unusual goals. If in most other novels, you are used to achieving a route through labyrinths and solutions, then with us things are a little different. If you, say, love solitude (which you emphasize with your behavior in the novel), then it will be very easy to get to the route of a similar theme or a similar character. Something else will be difficult in this sistem.

Getting what you Really want.Do you know what it is?

Well.. we are looking for the Unity programmer once again.

Leon Novikov's Dream

Update 0.65

Update 0.66