Day Delay. Vote for yo waifu. Or something.

I'm feeling pretty out of it today. I had a schizo break down the other day, and while I'm still entirely myself, I am a bit...vulnerable and sensitive, I suppose. And then today I just had to deal with a bunch of woman problems. Basically, fucking is not a thing I want to give a lot of thought to today.

So no update until tomorrow. I also have NO IDEA who to write about. Might do Melanie. If you really wanna see someone get some story time, comment letting me know.

Kaylee gets some story-time.

Yeah, I'm tired. So fuck making a fancy name. Since I did a massive rant yesterday, go read that for more info on what I'm doing etc. So...here's a Kaylee story. It's also a Sophine story. Who's Sophine? She's in a spin-off. She'll be in Jessica's Story eventually.

DOWNLOAD LINK: http://www.mediafire.com/view/8lfdmzznniczui3/Kaylee_Short.docx

Enjoy

Pudding Earl.

Earls Musings: Pudding Earl 101.

So, last week I posted my 100th post. I didn't even notice until I'd posted it, otherwise I'd have probably done something with it. That seems to be the tradition of people doing stuff like this. So instead I'm doing something for my 101st post. Now, I know I'm usually pretty narcissistic and full of myself, so this is going to seem like just more of that, but I figured I'd talk a little about myself, and why I did Shield High, what I'm doing right now, and why Shield High hasn't been updating properly. Though, that last one I've already covered here, I'll go more in-depth with it here.

Okay so, a couple of things about me that aren't like, super personal identifying factors, but are still important. First off, probably my most defining characteristic, if you ask me, I'm schizophrenic, and have aspergers. That's basically how I support myself right now, for any of you wondering if I worked, or if I made enough money from games, no to both. Some people say I'm lazy for not working because of my condition, and they're kinda right. I'm capable of working, as I've shown by doing Shield High for as long as I did, it's just not optimal for me. Shield High should be a lot more complete than it is. I just really struggle with keeping myself on task, especially for the incredibly dull programming that was RAGS, and the incredibly taxing writing that is making two girls fuck without repeating myself too much. Seriously. That shit's harder than it looks. It doesn't help that I'm living with my grandmother, and so writing during the day isn't often an option as it can get really awkward with her around.

All right, enough random shit about me, time for topical shit about me. Shield High, and why I started it. Wanna know something funny? For about two years of my life I couldn't stand to see lesbians. Or think about lesbians. Or really do anything related to lesbians. It made being on the internet very hard. The reason behind that is largely petty and childish, I'll be the first to admit that. I made the mistake of falling in love with a girl about...four years younger than me. Keep in mind, this was when I was around 18, so she was 14. Being a growing girl, she went through a lot of phases of working out her identity. For a while things were dandy, we were good together, and her working out who she was tended to make things easier for us. Or at least, not harder. Aaaaaaand then she finally got around to the issue of her sexuality. She now identifies as bi. When our relationship ended she identified as lesbian. So...I was bitter. And I couldn't face reminders of what happened. I'm not a healthy person when it comes to relationships, it's why I keep trying to avoid them since the last one I was really interested in turned out to be a sociopath. Point is, losing that relationship really, really threw me out of whack, and being reminded just brought the pain back. Some time during that whole, not being able to really stand lesbians thing, I played Corruption of Champions. And, like many things, I saw it and thought "I could do better." Actually, I thought "This has too many dicks and not enough lesbianism." So I set out to make Shield High. Partly to prove I could do it. Partly because I was upset about the lack of school girl lesbian fighting games. But also partly because I needed to do it for myself. It was part of a recovery process for me. It took lesbians out of the context of what I'd lost, and made them about my girls. My amazing lesbian fighting school girls.

And that brings us to another point. Why Shield High started to struggle. Honestly, it got to a point where I didn't need it anymore. I don't need Shield High. It's not helping me recover anymore. I've talked with that ex multiple times since, and I can do so without any pain, without any real problems. Sure, we fight about her current girlfriend, but I think a little bit of hatred there is justified, I had said from day one she was going to be what killed our relationship. Score one Pudding Earl. But regardless, Shield High lacked the drive it needed to be worth working on. It's lacked that for ages. I think the last plot I was truly invested in was Stacy. Everything since has been written because I made the commitment to write it. So, am I going to stop writing it now? Well, no. I just need to come at it from another angle. Which is why I'm allowing myself this downtime. Until I look at the idea and say "I really want to write this" I don't plan to do much with it. Some days inspiration strikes, and I want to pick it up again and keep writing, hence my surge of activity for Karen. Sadly, that didn't stick with me. I'll keep writing the weekly shorts, don't worry. It'll help me get in touch with the girls again, and see if I can find something to pull me back in.

Final point, what am I doing right now? Well, the past couple days have been spent on this STUPID FUCKING PROGRAMMING ASSIGNMENT. Though, my problem there is largely laziness, I'll admit. I plan to cave in tomorrow and just watch the video on it. I've done enough and solved enough problems of it I think. Once I'm done with that I'll start playing around with a proto-type of the new combat engine I have planned for Shield High. I'm also trying to pick up on writing the spin-off for Shield High I started ages ago. The goal is to write a couple hundred words a day until it's finished. I may release it in chapters as I go. Maybe.

Anyway, thanks for bearing with me through my little rant about myself, and I hope you found it insightful.

Pudding Earl

P.S. I HAVE A RAIDCALL DAMNIT. DOES NO ONE WHO LIKES CHILLING WITH ME HAVE RAIDCALL?

Pudding Earl gets distracted. Forgets he didn't release.

So yeah. I though I made a release last week. Turns out I didn't. So...uh...that happened. That was a thing. It really shouldn't have been a thing. But it was. Luckily it's not a thing this week. No sir. I remembered to do a last minute piece of writing about Sasha and Monica. I sadly haven't fleshed them out yet, but I was pretty happy with old Sasha, and I have a rough idea of how to change her for the future. I've been a bit behind on my writing. Getting into the mind-set of working is hard when you're not using the same set up from before. I'll get the hang of it soon.

On the programming front however, I'm almost ready to start prototyping the combat. Which is the plan, making a combat engine for you guys to test and give feedback on. I'll also be testing an idea I had for a simplified dialogue options with that, to see if you all thing it's adequate.

Sasha short: http://www.mediafire.com/view/5t2jz80kzkqg5k1/Sasha_Short.docx

I'm thinking of making that her name. Sasha Short. Anyone like that? Hate it? Have a better idea? I'll get back to you next week on it.

Also, more musings will be coming soon. Sorry for delays and shit.

Pudding Earl.

P.S. FUCK YEAH 100 POSTS.

Karen gets her short story debut.

Yes, I've been working on Karen for a while. I'm still working on Karen. The new combat engine I'm devising is going to take time. Mostly to write all the dialogue for it. As a small sneak preview, it contains 12 actions you can take outside of grapples. That means 144 combinations need dialogue written. So yeah, it'll take time.

On to the topic at hand however, Karen is being given a personal overhaul, and a last name. She's now Karen Atkinson, and she's less bitchy and flip-floppy than before! Pretty much every single one of her scenes is being re-done, since the writing is so old I felt it didn't match the overall tone of the later versions of Shield High. That is being fixed up. And news on the programming front, should be a week or two before I can start making an engine. Hopefully I'll have the first combat written by then. I wouldn't bet on it.

Final point of news, I've migrated from the old IRC channel which I never used because it was so out of my way to a raidcall channel for Pudding Games. ID is 6068553. I'll update all the other info later.

And now for the short story I promised in the title. Here: http://www.mediafire.com/view/eaa5684e1gsieez/Karen_Short.docx

I know it's not my best work, and I apologize for that. I'll try and get things going better later.

Pudding Earl.

Shield High work resumes.

Ha! Gotcha! You were expecting me to announce I was actually making the game again weren't ya? Well, tough, I'm not. So, what AM I doing? Well, I'm writing. I realized "Hey, I don't have to wait until I've learnt to code to write all this shit." Yes. It took me that long. Shut up. So now I'm re-working...everything. Right now I'm giving Karen depth. Then I'm re-writing her. Entirely. She'll keep the same general traits, she'll just get more features. She'll be a person. A perverted, overly sexualized person. But still, a person.

But what good would it do for me to do this and wait until release to use it? Not very. Which is why I'm going to be releasing Shield High Stories. Every week I will give you a short story about the character I'm working on and her past. Or I will give you a short story about how Shield High got to be how it is. Probably not that one. That's another project. Which I should work on. Point is, more content is coming.

...And yes, it will always involve lesbians and fucking. In case you were worried I'd forgotten my roots. EDIT: Hehehe, roots.

Special thanks to /d/ for re-inspiring me to work.

Pudding Earl.

Hiatus Update

Okay, so it's been ages since I've posted here, and I figured everyone deserved to be in the know on what is going down for Shield High and Pudding Games in general. First off, my personal problems are resolving. They're not yet entirely stable, but I'm all around happier now than I was before, and I'm motivated again. Half of this motivation has been the fact I'm working on a new project for Pudding Games with a team of 8-ish people and I'm really pumped to see how that turns out. Unfortunately, that project is consuming all of my creative writing juices, which brings me to what everyone actually cares about, Shield High.

I managed to keep weekly updates going for a good part of a year because of momentum. When I started I was full of ideas and weekly releases were easy. By the end of the year every release was a struggle as keeping the content fresh and interesting was getting harder and harder. Once that momentum got lost by tricky events in my life, getting back on track proved really, really hard. By this stage anything resembling that momentum is gone. So, does this mean Shield High is cancelled?

Of course not. I've been planning to transition Shield High over to being actually coded for a while now, and since I'm just now regaining the functionality to resume studying, I'm going to be aiming to start doing that by the end of the month. If I'll succeed, no clue, but that's the goal. I figure building the engine up, and having to polish the content will get me back into a good swing of things, and allow me to continue making good updates. So basically, Shield High will remain on hiatus until 0.6 is ready, however expect the first part of another, completely different, project to be showing it's face in a month or two. I still have to pull together a lot more work on this new thing.

Anyway, sorry for the delays.

Pudding Earl