November 23: The First Decade

On November 21, 2014, I posted the first version of TLS to the public internet, so I've always treated this time as an anniversary of sorts. Eleven years later, the primary development of the project is complete.

At the time, I had no idea what it would become, if anything. TLS was just one of many different creative projects I had attempted to throw at the wall, despite failure after failure. To this day, I think that dumb luck has a major impact on success and I still consider myself extremely fortunate to be in this position.

This process has transformed my life, and as I've always said, I haven't been wasting everyone's trust in me. Between this Patreon and various side ventures, I've put myself in a strong position to continue pursuing creative work for the rest of my life.

So, what does that mean? Working on this combination of TLS and other projects has taken me from my mid-twenties to my mid-thirties, so let's call it roughly a decade of my life. Just one phase in what will hopefully be a long career. I am statistically likely to get at least three more such decades, hopefully more. I don't think I can be alive and not produce stories, so I have no intention of stopping.

What will those decades hold? Well, not another TLS every decade, not least because I need to keep working on finishing the scenes and other components. But over time I definitely intend to take on more saga-length projects, it's just a question of how best to place them.

In some ways this is a scary time for me, because I brought things to a definitive conclusion instead of trying to drag them out forever. I've been desperately working on follow-ups, but those take time, especially now that expectations are so much higher for me... I can't just create a 15 minute demo and put it up on forums for maybe no one to ever play.

I don't intend to focus on the negatives, though; right now, I'm trying to think about how I'll feel in 2035. I'll be in my mid-forties with TLS behind me alongside many other complete projects. Above all, I hope that I'll have extended my capabilities, including potentially building a larger team.

As I've said in other places, TLS will still have a role in the Patreon, including:

• Continued artwork until 100% complete, unless dropping support means I cannot afford it.

• Tweaking and improvements. For example, there's an exciting possibility for a Eustrin upgrade that I'll give its own post, maybe next week.

• I promised short stories about the world of TLS post-game, and I've even finished one, but I don't know when I'll begin posting them.

• I still like the idea of doing a developer's commentary on TLS, but right now that sounds exhausting, so not yet.

With all of this said, please forgive me for a little bit of self-aggrandizement. Please enjoy some numbers regarding the scope of TLS:

We also have some other data extracted from the game that I thought might be interesting to people:

While we have enormous amounts of data, I asked Lamsey for these specifically because I think they show why we don't visualize more: it mostly confirms what people would guess. Qum spends most of her time happy, Wynn uses her more extreme expressions more rarely, etc. We have Aka divided between her forms, but I'm not sure how much can be drawn from the comparison.

Also fun, here is a breakdown of lines/words from the most talkative characters:

And if none of this has been nerdy enough for you, I asked for a graphic solely on ellipses!

I've seen some RPGs where ellipses get voice-acting and the characters goes "Hunh" or "Ahn" or something, so I just want to clarify that I do not mean that. I use ellipses when I want to show a character expression without dialogue, a notable silence instead of speech.

There's a (likely apocryphal) story that on his deathbed, Alexandre Dumas reread The Three Musketeers to see if it was still good, then felt he could die in peace. Now, I'm not particularly likely to replay TLS on my deathbed (for one, I would never get around to dying), but I find myself thinking similar thoughts.

I feel a deep sense of satisfaction having completed TLS. I predict that I'll feel the same way about it in ten years and yes, most likely at the end of my life it will be one of the things I reflect on happily. So... TLS is both done and not done. Thank you all for being on this journey with me. ^-^