Progress Report

Hey, everyone! 

The final chapter of Tai's Route is almost done now. I know this one has been a long time coming, and there's a good reason for that! It's not so much to do with the specific content of this chapter, but rather my entire writing pipeline. Long story short, going forward, my process for developing Sileo is going to be completely different. I can't reveal all of the ingredients in my special sauce, at least not just yet - some things are still being locked in or are extremely promising but untested in practice. 

One of the things I've done is buy a whole new computer for the purposes of working on Sileo. One annoyance I've been dealing with for most of this year now is needing an entirely separate machine (specifically one running Mac OS) just to assemble iOS builds. Just migrating the tens of thousands of files and many gigs of xCode project files between computers via Dropbox was kind of a nightmare - a single small change in the source code would result in almost the entire project being rebuilt, sending gigs and gigs of new data to the cloud each time. In addition to these issues, I longed for the ability to work in comfort, be that outside in the sun, lying in bed, or in some remote location should I not be home. I had a laptop, yes... a hefty gaming laptop with 4 hours of battery on a good day and fans that would drown out a chainsaw with only the slightest provocation! 

You might have guessed what I ended up doing. I bought a damn Macbook, didn't I? *sigh*

Okay, look, not gonna lie. It's silent. The battery lasts forever. It's lightweight. It's fast. And Mac OS is the one platform where my entire process can happen on one machine. No, Apple doesn't deserve credit for that. After all, it's an issue they created by locking iOS development behind Mac OS. But, despite that... I hate to admit that I really like this thing. Even if it cost three arms and a middle leg... *grumble grumble*

One major plus about it is that I can better isolate myself from distractions now. Developing on a massive gaming desktop is hard, especially when my fucking boy Kazuma Kiryu is peering at me demanding that I play his latest adventure... I never could say no to him, but now, I don't have to - I won't even be in the same room!

In addition to all that stuff, I've simplified my software stack, removed a bunch of clunky tools that required an awful amount of handholding to work and used some new software and tools to centralize all my documentation, development plans, etc etc. I've now got vastly better tools for writing revisions, spelling and grammar, consistency checking, code maintenance and so much more besides. This has all required a lot of setup, but I wouldn't have spent so much time if I didn't think it would be worth the time spent. Today, I got my first real taste of how things will be with this new setup... and holy shit boys, it's on.

On paper, I should now be able to produce better work in half the time. I say on paper, but this isn't just theory, I know for a fact that's possible. The question that remains is if I'll find new ways to disappoint myself and all of you. I assure you, I'm fucking amazing at doing that. But perhaps with better tools, less clutter and tech debt and fewer distractions, maybe... just maybe...?

I still have a little more to do before everything is completely ready for showtime, but already 20x5 has some of the strongest writing in Sileo to date. And with the way things are shaping up, this is just the warm up!

Anyway, it won't be long now. Everything's coming up milhouse, and I'm looking forward to being able to prove that real soon!

PS: "FOR FUCKS SAKE XEVVY ENOUGH TAI'S ROUTE WE WANT AXEL" I know, I hear you. I've been hearing you. You will get some delicious chee soon enough, I promise. In the meantime, I'm going to make the wait worse by dropping this little nugget of info: The poly route will contain a branching narrative and multiple endings. Get hype? Get hype.