Crimson High v0.41 - Dev Log #1

Konichi-what's up folks, this is Vertigo-chan with the latest CH developments.

Weird introduction aside, I hope everyone's doing well and having an appropriately decent time on this here planet of ours.

I, myself, am having just that, and I'm going to use this post to elucidate this claim in staggering detail. So, strap in (or -on, depending on preference) and brace yourselves for impact of the highest magnitude.

------------------------------------------------------------

After hyping this post up to an unhealthy (and frankly unwarranted) degree, I'm going to start out with a bit of a personal piece; we're gonna talk about life stuff, woo!

As you may or may not have noticed (those of you who are on the Discord more so than those who aren't, probably), I've been a bit.. let's say unresponsive lately. That's not due to any grievous illness or deep-seated issue or anything, but more so because life has been a bit hectic in recent weeks; tax season has begun (I hate it, why is this so confusing?), I've had a bunch of miscellaneous appointments (tax advisor among them, thankfully) and birthdays I needed to attend (due to a recent and newfound resolve to be a bit more social IRL going forward), and as if that wasn't enough to distract me, I've also gotten back into working out, now that the dark months are almost behind us and my hibernation is almost over.

Now, before any of you start panicking: This is NOT me saying that I wasn't able to make any progress on the update. I got some good work in nonetheless. But more on that in a later section of the post.

No, all this is meant to say is that my inactivity/unresponsiveness comes from positive and helpful developments and are NOT signs of an incoming burnout or anything. In fact, I'm very conscious of burnout as a concept, and I try my utmost to take preventive measures so that I can see CH through to its end and not drop it like a hot potato halfway through, like so many other games have been dropped throughout the years.

I'm not blaming anyone for getting burned out on game development, though, provided the claim is actually warranted and not just an easy excuse for not wanting to put in the work anymore. Burnout is an insidious little thing, and it can creep up on anyone at any time, given a lack of self-care and/or an unhealthy attitude towards work-life balance—both things that one might not be aware of until it's too late.

Mental health (care) is actually a topic I'm personally pretty interested in and have considered making a post about before, exploring and maybe explaining the topic from the perspective of someone working in a field with a (perceived) very high rate of cases of burnout and mental health issues. If that's something you'd be interested in, feel free to let me know in the comments and/or on the Discord.

------------------------------------------------------------

Anywayyyyyy, let's get to talking about the update now, shall we? That's (probably) what you're here for, after all.

The keen observers among you may have noticed that this post lacks something that other, recent posts had: Preview renders. And there's a very good reason for that, I swear!

Said reason is that I decided to do another bout of pre-writing for a couple updates, like I did at the beginning of 2024, to create a bit of a backlog/buffer for myself to fall back on if need be. There are a bunch of reasons why that is a good idea; here are a few of them for your consideration:

• It helps me write more consistently by allowing me to go back to already-written-but-not-yet-released updates and change some details if necessary. This is how creative writing usually works, and not being able to revise my own work to make things fit together neatly has handicapped me in the past, due to the inherent nature of episodic releases without a fully written script to work off of. I do have an outline for the story and a few milestones I want the story to hit, but the nitty-gritty details only come into existence when I write for an update, so it's easy to end up writing myself into a corner or even adding logical inconsistencies/contradictory story elements. To avoid these things, I usually do a lot of researching of my own story, but that doesn't always prevent me from making mistakes or missing stuff which the fun corners of the internet love to pounce on. Hence, pre-writing.

• I'm only human, so I am vulnerable to things like illness, lack of motivation, distractions, and what have you. Having a backlog of at least one, but preferably two or more scripts to fall back on has the upside that it allows me to release consistently, even in those cases, because I'm the kind of person who puts pressure on themselves when not able to perform, due to an inherent sense of duty. And as we've talked about before, I'd rather avoid overworking myself into burnout or getting into a downward spiral of self-recrimination and pressure, and thus having to drop CH because it's no longer enjoyable (or even worse, outright distressing). Having a backlog gives me a sense of security and peace of mind because I know that I'm not disappointing anyone even though, let's say, I've gotten a nasty flu and can't work for a week or two, for example.

• There's also an argument to be made for the different states of mind needed for both writing and rendering work. I'm not sure if it's the same for every creative person, but for me at least, writing takes a certain mindset and isn't something I can just do william-nilliam. I need to be in at least a decent mood, I need to be healthy, and I need to be able to focus. And I need to be able to "get into the zone," as weird as it may sound to those of you who haven't done any creative work before - believe me, past me found the concept weird as well, but it's actually a thing. Well, the last 3+ years have shown that I need a few days at the start of each development cycle to get myself into the right state of mind. Once I'm in that state, though, I can keep writing for a while, and it's easy to pick up where I left off the day before. So, by writing for a few updates back-to-back, I can essentially write more in less time because I don't have to get myself into the right mindset before each new update - since I'm still there.

There are probably more reasons and arguments for it, but I feel like I've already written up a storm over here, so I'm not going to bother trying to think of them and instead continue on with the dev log.

------------------------------------------------------------

Let's talk about concrete plans instead.

Some of you may already have heard, but for those of you who haven't: I plan on making one of the upcoming updates significantly longer, both to see how it feels and because the update itself warrants it. This "special" update will feature a whole chain of events which I feel like would suffer from being cut off in the middle due to me getting to the average update length. Instead, I'd like to get it all out in one go, so that y'all can enjoy it without interruptions.

Naturally, this means an extended update cycle, because it will be twice or thrice the length of a normal update (approximation; I don't actually know how long it's going to be due to not having written it out yet, but it should be somewhere around there).

I can't say for certain which update it's going to be yet (again, due to not having written things out yet), but as of right now, it looks like it's going to be v0.43.

Now, what does this mean? It means that I'm going to finish writing for v0.41 and v0.42 (the former being done already) for now. Then, once v0.42 is done, I'll start rendering for v0.41 so that I can release it to y'all in a few weeks (ETA below). Afterwards, I'll get onto the rendering for v0.42 and release that probably not too long after, depending on how things go. And once we've had the v0.42 release, I'll sit down and get to work on v0.43. After that, we'll most likely go back to the usual release pattern.

The aforementioned ETA for v0.41 is around mid-March. I'll make another dev log in a couple of weeks, once the writing phase is over, though, once I can make an actual (albeit rough) prediction instead of a wild guesstimation.

------------------------------------------------------------

And that's pretty much it for this month's Dev Log again. As usual, chuck your comments/feedback into the comment section below, or onto the Discord. Also, if there's anything you want me to add to future Dev Logs, toss that in there, too. I feel like there's potential for growth here, but I honestly don't know what else I could add - so if you have any ideas for things that could be worthwhile additions.. let me know.

Next post I'll make on here will be the aforementioned 2nd dev log with the updated ETA in X (placeholder, not Roman numeral) days.

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

Cheers!

TL;DR: Read the post, lazy-bones.