CROSSPOST: Big Important News Post

So I just made a big ol' post on Patreon, but in case people only read here/for when that post is gone, I'm just gonna post the whole thing here as well.

"Hey Pudding Earl, where's that next update?" I hear you all probably asking. WELL.

I'm still working on it slowly but surely. Haven't been particularly motivated, so it's dragging, but it'll get done when it's done. The motivation comes in stops and starts and right now it's a stop but I know myself well enough to know the moment I try and look at doing something else there'll be a big surge of motivation to write some more.

But that's not the news. No, the news is I've decided to delete the Patreon. I'll leave it up for like...a week? Probably? Just so people can read this update and not be confused when it vanishes, but after that...poof, gone.

That doesn't mean I'm abandoning Shield High again, I do like it, and I do want to finish it one day. But Patreon doesn't actually help with that. If anything, it makes it harder. When I started the Patreon it was because I was under the impression that perhaps having some financial incentive to update would make me want to work harder. It uh...it did the opposite of that. It turned what should be a project of passion that sometimes results in a paypal donation into a flailing business venture led by someone who has no idea what he's doing. While an update before Patreon would be rewarded with a download count and some comments, a nice, feel good moment, now it was met with money. A...very small amount of money. An amount of money that wasn't worth the time spent on it.

Which isn't to say I don't appreciate the support! Chatting with folks on the discord is great, it gets me excited to work on things again, and the comments left asking questions or pointing out how I messed up horribly are lovely too. Those things are priceless. And Patreon, in some ways, puts a price on them. And that's not healthy for me, for my passion, or for my dealings with you.

The second side of things is it puts a sense of urgency on work that doesn't help either. I feel like every day spent without finishing some part of the game is a day that I've failed. And that stress makes the next day a bit harder to drag myself into working, and so the problem just compounds on itself and...I don't need that in my life.

So, what does Patreon being deleted mean for you, my dear fans?

Well uh...I'll post updates on the blog instead I guess? I'll have to remove the Patron rooms on Discord too. Other than that, not a lot. I'm pushing Shield High back down to being a hobby project instead of my main project, but since it was being put off in favor of hobby projects anyway some days, that doesn't mean anything. All that changes is I'll have a new main project to be working on.

See you all back on the blog!

Pudding Earl.

P.S. To everyone who pledged to get early access to something then deleted their pledge in less than a month. I saw every single one of you. And I remember. But I'm not mad. I'm just disappointed.

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.