So has been a while since my last post....A lot of things happened and saly also quite a lot that didn't go as I had expected or hoped.
Some things didn't work out as planed, then I had a few beta testers who tried to protect me and said game parts were good
instead of as bad, ... then a few persons I hired for things dropping out, ... .
All in all it lead to me diong rewrite after rewrite and treading on the same spot for a long time. That is when I decided to take a time out (a few months) and experiment a bit while trying to analyze the underlying problems (no sense in eliminating the things I see, when the underlying problem is still there and causing more and more problems).
The main problems were that first I tried to make things too perfect, then second that I planed things in too large parts, so that even a small change because a beta found something not too good resulted in me rewriting almost a whole chapter. And then I had some problems visualizing the storyparts. I need exactly that to be able to create a good story, but failed at that. Still though I missed something....which I found out was that I needed to see some things like a map to be able to visualize things in my head. And last but not least I desparately tried to only have to use the art I already have, while still having to rewrite things time and again and changing parts of the storyline time and again.... which lead to me running circles too.
When I took my outtime I found the above problems and tried to find a way to eliminate them....which I did....in an I think unusual way, but what works works
So what do I do differently now?
1.) I split up every chapter in multiple scenes as before, but instead of staying there I'm splitting that up into the events themselves. Where each event is only a SMALL part of the chapter, and not spanning a quarter or half a chapter as before.
2.) I got myself a beta I trust to not try to not hurt my feelings (and instead telling me te truth even if painful).
3.) I got a few ppl who help me in my attempts to control my perfectionism.
Those 3 should eliminate most of the basic problems...including the rewrites (thus if something is bad I only need to rewrite a small part of the chapter instead of the whole chapter or even the game).
A 4th pointis also there, which took me the longest time to decide upon. In order to get rid of the visualization problems (and also being able to see how the game would pan out without having to do placeholders or waiting for atists time and again) I'm creating the game 2 times parallel with 2 engines. First the map design and prototyping with RPG maker and then the final game with renpy.
(despite it being called a prototype its still a full fledged game, only that I use that to move parts around as I need the map creation tools there and the event system there works well into the 1. solution point). Despite that as mentioned I still am doing the game ALSO in renpy.
So how will it work?
I'm doing the maps and the first version of a chapter with RPGmaker. Then after some testing I'm going to transfer it to renpy.
With my current working schedule (for my job) in mind I think the following plan is now realistic:
1.) Finishing the first chapter till june / july in rpgmaker
2.) Transfering the first chapter to renpy and programming in the full rpg system for the first demo till november
(this takes into account that the full fledged pathfinder 2nd edition only comes out in august and only then I can
do the final classes,...).
Its way later than I had originally expected (wanted to have it all up and running in Q1 2019 but with the setbacks I suffered I'm happy that I found a solid grounding again at all).
