Crimson High v0.45 - Dev Log #2

G'day and g'new year everyone!

Bit late, I know, but I tried my best to not exist online for the last few weeks. But more about that further down.

As usual, I'll try to keep things short, and will likely fail in doing so somewhere along the way.

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Alright, so first things first, the important stuff:
The next update (technically part 2) is being worked on and looking nice so far.

Keen as you are, you've probably already noticed the new thumbnail and version number up top, and may now be wondering why that is, if it's just the 2nd part of the "big update". Or maybe you already put two and two together, I dunno. But either way, the reason is pretty straight-forward: I've relabeled the part 2 as v0.45, with everything that comes with it - like a new thumbnail and pre-splash screen and all. There's no huge explanation for it either - it's mainly to keep things easier to label within the code and my own files, because "v0.45" fits in way better with the existing versioning pattern than "v0.44 part 2" does.

It kinda takes away from the whole "big update" thing I talked about for months, and I'm really not happy with that fact, but there was no way around that. In hindsight, splitting the update was the only reasonable choice I could've made, because I very urgently needed some time off. Just know that the two versions (v0.44 and v0.45) still technically add up to one big update and work well when played in direct succession.

I can't yet give a release date for the update, but I hope it won't take too long.

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Now that the important info has been given, I'll quickly talk about the last few weeks and the topic of work-life balance.

Basically, I sucked at it lol
I'm not sure what exactly it was - probably a combination of a lot of things - but by the time I released v0.44, I was more drained than ever before in my life, and I think things would've turned ugly if I hadn't split the update like I did. The last 3-4 weeks of working on the update felt like (mentally) walking through molasses and my productivity visibly deteriorated - just like my mental state. I was beyond exhausted. And honestly, I think a lot of that was due to pressuring myself to get the update out "in time". Though I really don't know where this self-imposed deadline came from; I was still "on schedule", it just didn't feel like it, and reminding myself of the fact only helped so much.

Ultimately, that resulted in my having to take a bit more time off than I would've liked, and I only ended up getting back to work last week. It sucks, but there was no way around it. I needed that time to rest and recharge. And let me tell you, that did wonders to both my mental and physical health. I no longer dread working on CH, like I did near the end of v0.44. In fact, I'm back to enjoying working on it, and I think the quality reflects that, too. So much so, that I've even added a couple scenes to v0.45, making it even slightly longer than initially planned. Overall, I expect the workload for what I still need to do to be about as much as a whole "normal-length" update, seeing as I don't have any writing but a lot of rendering to do still. But we're getting a bit off-track here. Basically, what I'm saying is that things sucked for a while, but they suck no more. I just had to lay low for a bit and give myself some breathing room.

Now, what does that mean going forward? Not a lot, honestly. I'll try to be more mindful of my own limits and to rest earlier instead of waiting until I'm close to breaking.
Naturally, I also won't try making any big updates like that anymore, either.
Other than that, CH will probably just continue like before, just with a bit more mindfulness and better resource management.

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Finally, a quick info for those of you who aren't on the Discord:
For the last few years I've been posting semi-regular progress reports on the Discord, since it was easy to do and kept people up-to-date on, well, the respective update's progress.
So far I haven't done that on here, because I didn't want to make dedicated posts for it every other day. That would've just been annoying for everyone involved.

However, going forward I'll (try to) make a pinned post on here that I'll just edit anytime I make a progress report on Discord, so it shows my current progress at a glance as well. I won't notify you about any changes to that post, but anytime you're curious about where things are at, you can just go there and check. I think I can make the initial post without notifying anyone as well, but in case I can't, sorry about the potential double notification lol

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And that's pretty much it for this Dev Log again. As expected, it didn't turn out nearly as short as I had hoped, but oh well.

As usual, chuck your comments/feedback into the comment section below, or onto the Discord.

Next post I'll make on here will most likely be the release schedule. Not counting the progress report post in a few minutes, of course. You know what I mean.

Until then, and with my utmost appreciation for all your support, my beloved patron, I bid you farewell.

Cheers!