It's update time

But there isn't really any update to be had.

At the end of Phase 1, I stated that the plan was to work on some outstanding stuff then move on to Phase 2, probably mid january. This has turned out to be completely inaccurate. We're now trampling towards the end of the month and I'm still buried in other projects. The only real excuses I have for this are:

• I have got really behind on Patreon rewards#
• I've neglected my animations
• I had to go away for a week

The Patreon rewards thing has been a growing issue. I kept putting those on the backburner in the final push for Phase 1 and they always needed to be done. I'm starting to catch up, but the start of a new month is going to push that back a bit more.

Next, the animations. I've been creating an animated series for a few years now, and I've had the 14th episode in production for about 9 months now. I keep trying to find the time to complete it, and this has been in progress the last few weeks as well.

Finally, I got the offer of some work for a week, but I had to go to London, which is the other end of the UK from me. But I enjoy being able to afford to eat, so I pretty much had no other option. That knocked out a full week, and I'm currently incubating some kind of virus from the whole thing, making everything super fun right now.

Resolving this

For starters, the other game I started work on took ages to get the multiplayer stuff in and working, so that's been shoved to the backburner for now. That's more of a spare time project.

Next, I'll give myself until the end of the month. Phase 2 will start on the 1st of Feb. If I still have animation work still to do, then I'll set up a schedule of something like 

• mon/weds/fri - Phase 2 work
• thurs/sun - Animation
• tues/sat - Days off / second game

This should mean that everything is getting time spent on it and it means I can get some days away from the computer when I can, and do the other game when I get back.

Of course, Phase 2 starting won't be actual phase 2 for a little bit. I will be restructuring the game from scratch. What this means is setting up things like gamemodes, savegames, proper file structures, characters blueprints and so on. This will all be set up in a brand new game directory. As the game is restructured and all the code gets optimised, I'll import across the existing assets, meaning only what is needed in the game is in the game, avoiding hundreds of unused assets clogging things up.

This will probably take a few weeks to get through, then Phase 2 can properly begin.