It's now here...for everyone!

As promised, the patch is now live for everyone, so I'm here to post a little reminder that that's a thing, and throw you a link to the relevant Patreon post.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/shield-high-0-69-21482980

That's the link, it has all the details on what's new there. Obviously there's a whole slew of bugs, and I'm working through them in between writing as I hear about them, so please comment here, there, in an email, or jump on my discord and give me a shout there. I'm on basically all the time. And just for good measure I'll throw the discord link in one more time for those who missed it last time in the post.

https://discord.gg/zBhqsHt

Until I post a musing, which I'll try and do soon-ish? This one will be Shield High related I promise.

Enjoy!

Pudding Earl

It's here! For Patrons at least

Shield High 0.69 is now out on the Patreon. For those of you who haven't pledged(I don't know why you wouldn't, I'm not charging you right now it's literally free early access and discord badges) you'll have to wait until the 24th to get it. I'll make another post about it then with more details.

Until then!

Pudding Earl

Shield High 0.69 coming in the next week!

Well, as the title says, 0.69 should be coming next week. It'll be Patron exclusive for a week or two, but not too long, since I appreciate not everyone is a Patron, and this is the first update in like, over a year. I finished writing the last scene for the new story arc today, so tomorrow I run tests, and then I have two or three days of wondering why it's all broken. After that, it should be up.

But before I post it, I wanna set expectations, and explain why I'm doing the things I'm doing. So first off, 0.69 isn't the miracle patch I want it to be. It's an additional story, some combat re-balances, and the beginning of a change in how actors are handled. They haven't all been ported to the new system, but every update I'll do a few more, and all the new characters going forward will have that change.

So now the question of why. Why am I pushing out an update I'm apparently not happy with? Well, because I spent the past week making excuses and not working. And it's become apparent to me that when I don't have a deadline, I just don't get shit done. So I'm pushing what I've got, and using that expectation to start posting more updates. The goal will be to make 1-2 stories per update, depending on how much tempo I can build up on my writing. With luck it'll be enough to turn over a story a week, and I can settle into bi-monthly updates.

And finally, a note to anyone not a Patron. Consider becoming one. I'm not charging for this update. I'm not charging for any updates until I hit a certain threshold of money per update. Before that point, with taxes, it's not worth the extra effort of recording the income, and having to save the money for taxes. So for the moment, being a Patron is just...free stuff.

Not gonna commit to a release date, but I'm aiming for Thursday at the latest. We'll see how that holds up.

Pudding Earl

An update on how things are going

Been a while since I posted here. I intended to post about this like half a month ago and then just...didn't. Anyway, I've made a discord so I can shitpost at people while I'm working on Shield High and give everyone live updates on how it's going. The hope is that if I have a few active people in there telling me to work harder, I might actually do it. You can get onto that discord right here: https://discord.gg/zBhqsHt

It's got some Patreon integration with rooms for patrons, but obviously that's not going to be a necessity unless you really want my private attention if the main channels pick up a bit.

Next bit of news, I've moved on from tweaking old stuff and am actually writing some new content. I'm hoping to build a habit of writing new event chains several times a week, and with luck there should be an update coming sometime in the next month or so. It's gonna be a bit wonky, in terms of some characters being updated to the new style, moddable style, while others are stuck with the old hard-coded style, and like, one will have combat text while the rest don't, but I've decided to abandon any delusion about my work flow and accept I work best doing a little bit of something and then moving on, and just rotating through the chores that need doing until they're all done.

Not a lot else to report, hope some of you can come jump onto the discord and I can relive the glory days of when I made an IRC for all of three months.

Pudding Earl

A little testing

Hey guys!

So I'm back at work on Shield High, trying to address some things that have been problems for far too long. The first one being that combat isn't as fun or challenging as it should be. As such, I've put up a couple of tests on my Patreon, which I'm now posting about here to get some more eyes on and hopefully a bit more feedback on.

Fatigue has been re-balanced a bit, the ability to take your own clothes off has been added, and the AI has been updated to be a hell of a lot smarter. All in all, I think it's a nice upgrade, but I obviously want the opinions of the people who actually play the game, so I'm throwing it up here too.

You can find the second, most recent test here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/more-testing-20228207

A couple of the scenes are broken, but you can still access combat as normal. I've been updating the actors to sit in their own separate files instead of being in the code, which has necessitated a few changes to event structures, and I'm only just getting started on updating this all.

That's all for the moment, suggestions for what can make combat more interesting are welcome. I've got some actual descriptions for the fights, like in the old version penciled in, but that's about it for the time being.

Pudding Earl

My procrastination cycle (Or why I go absent for ages at a time)

As I'm sure none of you are surprised to hear, I have a big problem with procrastination. It's not just a problem of not getting things done. I could overcome that with determination. Rather, it's a problem where I put pressure on myself to get things done. And when they don't get done, I don't just say "Okay, I'll do them soon." Instead I say "Okay I'll do them soon and then do even more to make up for it." You can see how this might lead to some problems. Because when the time comes to do them again, now there's even more work to do, and so I extra don't want to try and deal with it. So I don't, and then I tell myself I have to make up for it EVEN MORE.

That's why a single missed update will usually start to snowball out of control. Because I want what I give to be worth the wait, but that's almost impossible to deliver. And the longer I put it off, the harder it becomes to deliver. So the longer I put it off because of the self-imposed pressure. This current absence isn't actually caused by that. But it's being made worse by it. Since moving, I've not been legally able to work. That includes self-employed work like Patreon. I could get Patreon money, but it'd have to be taxed in Australia, which is just...an ungodly hassle to work out. So the plan was simply to not update until I could work.

Good plan so far right? Except I told myself I'd put in work during that absence. And I have! Just...not nearly as much as I'd like. I've even scaled back my expectations and I'm still not working towards them. So now that I'm less than a month away from getting the work authorization, I don't have anything remotely resembling an update, let alone one worthy of the time I made everyone wait for it. And because of that...I continue to not update it because not updating means not having to deal with the problem right now. It's a rather vicious cycle all things considered. One that I would like to get better about.

That having been said, there was a comment on the last blog post I made saying they wanted to see my work resumed. I'm going to assume that's referring to Shield High specifically, however in case it doesn't, I am...actually working on other things. I've posted about them before, but there was no engagement and no sign of interest at the time, so I haven't really bothered giving updates on that. If I'm wrong there, and people are just interested in my work broadly rather than Shield High specifically, let me know, and I'll start posting updates on anything else I'm doing.

Anyway, that's just where the situation is at right now. I'm gonna try and pull myself out of this slump and get something going, but I'm not offering any promises. I've made that mistake enough times as it is.

Pudding Earl.

P.S. On a quick side tangent I do think about Shield High quite often. It's not like it's been forgotten, just neglected.

Earl's Musings: Action Engagement

Sorry I haven't posted sooner! I legitimately just have not had thoughts to share. It was getting so bad I was thinking about just writing about a mechanic I'm trying to add in to Shield High. But then I was lying there and a thought came to me. Or rather, I studied, played Scarlet Moon a bit, and noticed a common theme between the two. Somewhere in the middle of both I found myself looking ahead to see how much further I had to go. And that got me thinking about when I usually get bored during text-based porn games.

I usually get bored when I have to scroll. A tiny scroll bar is fine, I can forgive that for the texts that end up getting a little long, but not so long they justify being split in two. A massive one however is just...kind of boring. I've spent so long having to perform a task that I start getting anxious to perform the next one. I just want a button press or something to break the flow of reading, to make it feel like a more manageable amount of story, even if it's not.

Ironically, I don't have this issue so much in Shield High entirely due to my own failings as a programmer. Making a scroll bar was too much work when I first started, so I instead opted to carefully curate my content to avoid going over the limits of what the screen can hold. This has created the useful side effect of meaning that even the longest scene still has a regular point where you need to click the button. This has an added bonus of making skimming less tempting overall. The information is going to vanish if you do press the button, so you're more likely to take a moment and read it more carefully. At least the first time or two it comes up.

I suspect this fact is also a contributing factor to the popularity of VNs. I've always felt like the requirement for you to click readily has weakened the overall strength of the writing (especially in sex scenes) however it also serves to compel you forward, and keep you somewhat interested in the story. One could even argue that it's some sort of skinner's box sort of thing. The fact that games typically start off with some reasonably frequent, petty choices, and then space them out after the introduction really just serves to further this idea, since choices would serve as the "reward" for which you keep clicking and reading for. (I realize I am an outlier as someone who reads most of the VN text even if I've seen it before. I've seen how others play them.)

Obviously I don't think VNs make for very good porn games. I don't know if I've openly stated as such before but I'll do it now. The format leads to substandard writing as you're forced to cram text into a relatively small box, and the art rarely makes up for the quality of the writing. They work best as...experiences? I suppose, that run for a couple hours max and culminate in a sex scene. Negligee would be a good example of one I think does it overall well.

But yes, just some broad thoughts as usual, nothing particularly insightful I'm sure, but it's not something I've ever properly thought about before, and since it has come to mind I'm going to write it here for you to consider, and for me to remember in the future. Much like how I had the phrase "Flying Cat Knights. Cats, that are knights, that can fly" sent to me on facebook so I would remember it in the morning. It's still as awesome an idea in my head now as it was a little after midnight.

Pudding Earl