Hope you all had a great Halloween! This year's Devtober is over, and as I did last year, I'm writing up a postmortem as part of the challenge! I've been more private with my progress this October than I was last year, but this should also give you a rundown of what I've been doing behind the scenes.

And yes, the plan was to release a new demo update by the end of the month - read on to see what happened to that! The short explanation is that it should be coming up in the next week or two.

What Went Right

As I announced on the first of the month, I've begun working with the help of a game producer! This has worked out really well so far. I struggle with keeping focused and motivated on my work, and having some kind of set task and deadline helps immensely with that, but they're difficult for me to set and keep on my own! Having someone external to bounce ideas off of (and get advice on priorities) is a complete game changer, and I've made way more progress on this in the past month or two than I have in the past year.

I spent quite a bit of time working on solidifying the aesthetic and storyline of the game, which has been long overdue. Things have begun to fall into place, and I'm very excited to share more of the world with all of you. It has been a little frustrating that most of my work has been full of spoilers - I love sharing my progress! - but all in due time.

This month, I also set down to document more of my approach to things and try to keep my thoughts more organized. I've migrated to using HacknPlan and google sheets to organize everything, instead of keeping it scattered across notes on multiple platforms. I ended up making an asset list and a writing tracker, both as spreadsheets, to help me understand where I am at a glance. And so far, from documenting my progress, I've noticed a few of my patterns, skills, and weak points. Right off the bat, I'm not a very fast writer or planner, but we can't all be great at everything!

And, finally, I was able to dev a little every day for October again... excepting the 29th on! But I promise I do have a very good reason for that, if you read on!

What Went Wrong

My goal at the beginning of Devtober was to release a demo update on October 31st. As I'm sure you can tell, that didn't happen. I had a few major life events happen this month, including that I got married on Halloween, so that's been taking up a lot of my time and attention! That means that I shifted more of my focus from gamedev to the physical world than I had planned for, and so I wasn't able to complete the demo in time to release it. In some ways, though, I think it's a small success that I chose to delay the update rather than try to crunch for it, which took a toll on me last year.

I also set a goal for myself, both after last year's Devtober and at the beginning of the month, to do a better job keeping my HacknPlan tasks up-to-date. That went kind of terribly! I hardly did any work on my tasks, with most of my progress confined to progress logs, spreadsheets, and the design model side of the site. It's still something I'd like to strive for in the future, but I'm definitely not there yet.

And, finally, I've been spending quite a bit of time on 3D assets. I've been struggling to settle down on a workflow for them, so it's been slow and inconsistent going. So far I've done my experimentation with Blender, with the help of addons such as Sprytile. So far I don't think it's quite what I need, but it's getting me through for now. I want to keep striving to make them more faster and efficiently, so I'd like to explore more tools in the near future!

Tips for Next Time

As with last year, I fully intend to continue consistent work on Lavender Hollow in the next few months. While this fell flat last year, I'm confident that I can hold to that this time around, now that I have a producer to keep me on track! I also don't intend to dev every day, and instead take regular breaks to avoid burnout.

Here's my action plan:

• Continue working with my game producer to set and keep goals, as the accountability and direction have helped immensely.
• Not just experiment, but also document. Keep a log of my approaches to problems and how they work out, so I can know how to solve them in the future.
• Continue to strive for better HacknPlan documentation, in order to better organize both of these points.
• I'd also like to incorporate my gamedev work more into my daily schedule! So far, I've just been working on things whenever I find the time, but I think establishing a routine is going to help me stay hacking all year.

I'm keeping things under wraps until the next update in a week or two, but expect to see some actual progress shots then. Thanks for stopping by!

Stay safe out there.

-Cicada