Hello everyone! This is going to be a long post so there will be a TL:DR bullet point summary at the very end.

I am honestly surprised with myself for seeing this through to the end. There were several points where I was too stressed out or burnt out to keep working on it, but I wanted to finish this project to prove to myself that I could do it.

Sharing is Caring:

Sharing is Caring is far from perfect, I know, but this whole thing has been a huge learning opportunity for me.

Early on, the pacing and continuity was kind of a shitshow. Part of the problem was I made the proof-of-concept build and then instead of developing that further into a proper introduction, I just added a few things onto the end of it to make it the half-assed intro for the full story. It was a jarring change of pace that threw the tone out of whack.

The other issue with the plot overall was that I didn’t plan it out in advance. I had ideas of what the major plot points would be and what the checkpoints for the sex progression would be, but I had no plan on how to get from one point to another. I would basically sit there at the beginning of each dev session and think “Okay, how is this chapter going to go…” and I had to jump through hoops to connect each chapter together. Some of it worked out, the story is not as bad as it could have been, but I for one am not 100% happy with it (though I am hypercritical of myself, so I don’t think I’d ever be lol).

One of the issues I had was that I could think of tons of interesting and fun sex scenes and situations for the characters to wind up in, but I struggled coming up with ways to make the plot fit them. Most times I wound up trying to insert the plot in between the sex scenes instead of the other way around, and so the story suffered because of that.

Burnout was also an issue for me, partly because I kept pushing myself to work on this project and partly because my real work would pile up and I would be mentally exhausted from that. I feel a responsibility to my followers, but especially to my Patrons because they’re financially supporting me. I don’t like the idea of someone paying me for a product/service and me not providing that on a reasonable basis. I know some of you would disagree and have told me in the past not to worry about it, and for that I am eternally grateful. My brain however is not so kind.

The quality of the images and animations was something that a few people have commented on, and I usually deflected those comments by blaming Koikatsu Party for being limited or something like that. That is only partially true, anyone who’s played other games using KKP assets knows that there is so much more that the program is capable of in the right hands. In all honesty, I just haven’t had the time or energy to learn to make the images better, and for that I apologize. I tried to make the most efficient use of the time I had to spend on this project, so once I found the most basic way of generating the images, I got complacent. I didn’t want to spend the extra time figuring out how to make the images better or spend more time per image. This ties into the burnout issue as well, more time spent on this stuff meant less time I could just relax and unwind.

The statistics in the game became irrelevant partway through the story because on the Netorare path you were locked in and the other two paths could switch back and forth. I found as I developed the game that using the stat comparisons was not as efficient as creating variables for each decision and then referencing those when appropriate. This shift in logic did increase the efficiency of the code, but I feel like not having the stats making as much of an impact detracted from the story, especially when the distinctions between the different forms of NTR was the whole point of the story from the beginning.

In the beginning, I was pretty consistent with getting dev updates/previews posted consistently every week, but as time went on I was getting less and less consistent. The last few builds only had maybe one or two preview posts each, which I felt bad about because I know most of you look forward to seeing the previews and because that’s one of the main Patron benefits. This again ties back into the burnout issue, because my development schedule became less consistent, the amount of previews I could post decreased.

Next Project:

Taking all of these things into account, I have a better idea of how I want development of my next project to go, and the first step is going to be taking some time off. I mentioned it in the release post for the last build of Sharing is Caring, but I wanted to elaborate more here. Starting April 1st (no jokes here) I will be pausing payments on Patreon for at least a month, probably more. As I mentioned before, I don’t like having people pay me if I’m not giving them something in return, so to help me destress and decompress during this break, pausing payments is going to be important. I plan to take at least a month off, probably two or three, to give me time to just rest and relax in my free time instead of worrying about development.

Knowing me though, I won’t take off completely and I’ll use some of this time to work on a few of the things I’d like to improve upon in the next project.

The biggest thing I wanted to have for SiC but never did was a replay gallery. Replay galleries are one of my favorite things about a lot of the visual novels I play because I can see my favorite scenes over and over without having to replay the entire story. Code-wise, implementing this early on seems essential otherwise you have to go back through the entire code to add the gallery scripts.

Background music was another item that a few people commented on and I agree that it would have added to the overall quality of the game. I had some initially, but then DMCA strikes were happening frequently to the adult games community so I took it all out. Since I bought a Macbook to test the macOS builds, I hadn’t been using it much, but I remembered there’s a cool free application called Garageband where you can make your own music. I’ve only played around with it a little bit so far, but I plan on learning how to use it more so that I can develop my own music for the next project.

I mentioned it earlier, but I want to spend more time in Koikatsu Party and learn how to make better images and animations. I am a little concerned about how much more time it will take per image, but practice makes perfect, so the more I practice the quicker it should be, and the payoff should be well worth it.

I also want to spend more time learning Ren’py, I would like to have a more custom looking UI. I know a lot of people don’t really pay attention to it, but for me, when I play a Ren’py game that has a distinct UI, it really stands out to me.

All this aside, I do promise to take some time for myself during this break. Burnout had a pretty strong negative effect on the quality of Sharing is Caring, and I want to avoid that in the future.

Conclusion:

I appreciate you taking the time to read through all this. I felt it was necessary to show that I’m aware of the imperfections in both the visual novel and my development methods, but also that I’ve learned a lot from this experience.

I am also incredibly grateful for all of the support from my Patrons, and I’m grateful for everyone supporting me elsewhere.

Keep your eyes out for a “Ask me anything” survey coming out on Patreon (for free) soon. I think it’ll be a fun little community interaction for us.

TL:DR:

Sharing is Caring:

• I know Sharing is Caring was far from perfect
• Pacing and continuity issues were rampant
• The plot/sex scene balance was not good
• Burnout was a consistent problem
• Images could have been better and I blamed Koikatsu unfairly
• Statistic became irrelevant
• I became inconsistent with dev updates/previews

Next Project:

• Pausing payments April 1st to take time off
• Learning how to add a replay gallery
• Learning Garageband to make my own BGM
• Spend more time learning Koikatsu Party
• Learn how to make custom UI in Ren’py
• Taking time for myself to avoid burnout

Conclusion:

• I’m incredibly grateful for all the support
• “Ask me anything” coming soon (via Patreon)