I don't think it bodes well when I open a dev log with "I'm so fucking tired" but it's true.

Not of the project, of course. In all honesty, I want nothing more than to get to working on Meteor Shower as consistently as I was able to since the first release. Unfortunately, real life gets in the way and as much as we want to ignore it, obligation rears its ugly head over us all whether we dev or we play.

It's been a hard couple of months balancing this project with university. I'm not going to open that whole can of worms but the summary is that my mental health has taken a sharp decline in the past few months because of the pressures of academia. I summarized, coded, edited, and drew everything for Meteor Shower's initial demo and I still take this role on even now as the project is being developed. Needless to say, the slowing down of my progress is by no fault of my own but the little imp in my brain is telling me otherwise.

That being said, it's not as if I've ever had a healthy relationship with my work to begin with. When I get into a personal project, I make it my life. It's all I ever do until it's done and then I find something shiny and new to get interested in and start the process all over again.

Of course, with that bleak opening, rest assured the project isn't done for. HAHA! I sure as hell hope it isn't, we all worked our asses off for that update and really all that's missing at this point is the edit and assets of Chapter 7. Pyr himself said that in our current build, he had enough material to create a trailer for the next update. I, myself, just can't say when it will come out but it should come out soon-ish. I just need to get through this semester.

Think of this log as a life update from the devs. We're human too, we get tired and broken down but we're not going to give up. We're literally done writing the script all the way to the end of the update. Apart from that, I'll provide some reflections and insights about my relationship with the project and what changes should be made from now on to improve my mindset upon working on it. I'll also be mentioning new features and fixes that we added to the game since the demo.

LIFE UPDATE

So what happened to us? Why did we slow down?

It started with Jinn. See, she's a fresh graduate and has only recently entered the workforce by the time we released the demo. She has a board exam to take in a few months and she's preparing for that. At the beginning of the year, she asked us if she could slow down on the writing front and we told her she can focus on real life for a moment.

She's already finished a very messy draft of the final chapter by then while I was still stuck editing chapter 6 and putting it into code with some new assets. Whilst she's out of commission for the project, I would have to take over her role for a while.

And that's sort of where it all falls apart for me. 

I already do a lot for the project, and a lot of people I know would argue that I do too much. Adding that extra weight alongside my already piling mental health issues regarding academia and actually trying to comply with requirements on time, plus my overseas relatives visiting, I haven't found the time recently to be consistently working on the project. Believe me, however, when I say I've been working on it at every crumb of free time I can find.

Plus, I submitted an audition for an OCT last December and now I have a deadline because I got in. That one's on me, but everything else is beyond my control. xD

Pyr is the only one who has free time so sometimes we get him to do the twitter posts but he also has commissions to do. At the moment he's mostly on stand by because he's waiting for me to finish the edits so he can make new tracks if he needs to.

REFLECTIONS

During Otome Jam 2022, I was a fucking machine. I got through all the edits and assets at lightning speed. It was such a high that my body didn't ever want to stop. I was like that for Chapters 3 and 4 as well.

Unfortunately, that's not always the healthiest approach to things.

Now, when Jinn does come back to work on the game as often as she did before she had to study for her board exam, I likely wouldn't be working on the other assets as fast as I used to. For instance, just because I can draw 3-4 CGs a day doesn't mean I should. I learned this the hard way when schools lifted the online classes and started doing them on site again.

You get sick sometimes. Burnout is real. The commute bogs you down. Just because you enjoy something doesn't mean it doesn't tire you out.

And trust me when I say I really REALLY enjoy working on Meteor Shower. We've gotten so attached to these characters because we've been conceptualizing them for about three years at this point, it's crazy! Hell, we even have a whole series planned. Meteor Shower is just the first step.

But anyway, since I am making changes about the way I work, that would unfortunately mean pushing deadlines back as well. We're still going to be consistent, of course, just kinder to ourselves. Personally, when we release Meteor Shower's first update, I'm going to take a three month break from this project to sort of just... reorient myself and feel human again.

Hopefully, our readers will stay for whatever we later have planned for our girl Lori and our boy Taylor.

UPDATES

The following is just going to be a list of updates we made to the new file that will be coming out in a month or two when we finish it:

• I personally forgot to add a home button in the demo that would take you back to the main menu. I added that in now because I know that can be a bit annoying to not have.
• Midway through working on Chapter 3, I completely overhauled the sprite system. For speed's sake in otome jam, I didn't use layered sprites for the original entry but because we had time now, I replaced every single sprite I used with them.
• I added relationship values from the start of the game that counts your reputation with certain characters in the story based on the choices you make. Unfortunately, this means that old saves are going to be broken. That's something that Pyr pointed out to me, and unfortunately I haven't found a way around that.
• I edited some scenes in the first two chapters too, added one of Cody's photos in that infamous scene with Scarlett peeping over Lori's phone. Most of the edits are minimal but I thought it was worth mentioning.
• As of the moment, I've counted about 3 new backgrounds, 13 new CGS (not counting variations), 4 new character sprites, and about 8 new tracks. There's going to be a lot of content to read through, and fun little scenarios that involve our adorable cast of cringey unruly teens. There will be more later because I still have assets to draw for chapter 7.
• Also I've added a cute little mouse pointer.