Maids & Masters (& Strategy Guide Act 3 Progress)

I'm a little bit past the mid-point of Act 3 right now; probably about a third to halfway through the castle. You can get some specific details and stats over on Patreon and/or Subscribestar (for free!).

The current hurdle is the library stacks puzzle that gets you into the secret library. Since so much needs to move, it's all events in the editor, which makes the screenshot for the guide look like a mess. Putting more numbers and blocks and lines on there to try and create a visual reference without making it look even messier isn't easy, and that's before getting into making the instructions for the solution legible but concise.

I continue to hope and pray ya'll appreciate this guide, cuz getting all this done is work.

 

There's really not much left after this puzzle is done, though, which is nice. Some basic instructions for where to go to get the rest of the way to the courtyard and what you can find along the way is the castle's mid-point, with the castle catacombs and the second half of the castle ending with the final boss fight being all that's left after that.

It's another busy week this week (I'm not even sure how much time I'll have to get work done tonight), so it'll be close getting the story portion of the guide finished for Friday, but I'm confident I can make it happen.

 

Then it's on to filling in all the appendices, which (like is mentioned on Patreon and Subscribestar) is likely to take me another three weeks. I might be able to smash it down into two if I'm lucky, but my post schedule means it'll likely take three weeks to get it posted anyway.

Which is for the best, because that'll help stop me from working myself half to death and burning out and not having the energy to start development on my next project. The appendices aren't just fun info segments (though that is part of it, certainly), it's also where each Maid will get a page dedicated to combat strategies and the intricacies of how their abilities function, all their affection quests, where to find all the mothers and how their various mechanics work, everything you need to know about all the trophies, and so on.

 

Speaking of my next project, one more Patreon and Subscribestar plug - both places have a chance for you to vote on my next project, even if you aren't a paying Patron/Subscriber. It is effectively just a tie-breaker poll, but like I mentioned recently - I still want to know your opinion. If I'm lucky enough to get to make yet another project after this next one, it gives me a more solid direction to go in and a better idea of what you want to see out of me.

Maids & Masters (& The Strategy Guide & Computer Troubles)

It seems like I can't get through a project without some form of computer trouble no matter what I do to try and minimize both the odds of it happening and the impact it has when it does happen.

For some context, one of my friends gave me a RAM upgrade to try and make my life a little easier. Which was great and I appreciate him doing that, none of this is his fault and I'm glad to have the upgrade.

However, swapping out my RAM led to some sort of hardware conflict. It didn't affect my work at all at first, programs would just crash every so often for reasons I had a very hard time trying to diagnose. I updated drivers, I installed security updates, I rolled updates back and reinstalled them, I updated more drivers, I ran hardware and software scans that turned up no issues, I read through tech help threads with similar issues that found solutions that didn't fix the issue for me, and somewhere along the line, all my attempts to fix the problem made the problem worse.

What that boils down to in terms of progress is that I spent a lot more time trying to find a solution for my programs crashing on me than I did actually working on the guide.

 

As frustrating as all that was, though, the issue does now seem to be fixed (at least to the extent that trying to create situations that caused crashes before doesn't cause any crashes now), and I've managed to still make enough progress on the guide that I don't feel like I've fallen horrendously behind. Really, the biggest downside of the whole ordeal is that I had less time to relax and reset before I had to make myself be productive the next day, which means I'm yet again flirting with burnout.

But hey, now I have twice as much RAM as I used to, so I get better performance out of things when I do let myself relax.

There's also not a lot of game left to make a guide for. As far as the main story goes, it's just the shrines in the northlands and the castle itself.

 

Granted, that doesn't count all the appendix stuff that still needs doing, which is likely to take a couple weeks to fill in, but one thing at a time. We'll get there.

Maids & Masters (& Starting Act 3 of the Strategy Guide)

I didn't get as much done over the weekend as I'd have liked, but a healthy chunk of the war has been finished. The main thing I need to do right now is actually play through it to double check myself, then I can finish the war and get started on the wastes, which is another segment I've seen a number of people struggle with. Though I think that's mostly because you can't actively see the doors you need to walk through when you're outside the towers on one Estate.

 

The war itself is also a segment I've seen a number of people struggle with, but understandably so. If you don't like the combat system and neglect investing in Emily's (and later Master Emmerich's) Contracts, both your level and your gear ends up lacking. There isn't a ton you can do about that in the moment, especially if you're trying to get all the trophies, so hopefully the guide will help with that. Even if it means following the whole guide or reading way ahead and spoiling yourself on how Act 3 starts.

 

I'm still not totally sure exactly how long finishing the guide will take me, though. I can make a few good guesses - hopefully I'll have the war done tomorrow, complete the wastes over Thursday/Friday, spend the next week on the northlands and one more week on the castle itself, meaning the story will be done by the end of the month pretty comfortably - but once the story is done, I've got all the appendix information to enter in. The Uncommon language primer is gonna be fairly easy; I already have my own document for that exact purpose, I'll just need to add some commentary and edit it a bit so it's easier to read for someone who isn't me.

I have no idea what the other appendices are gonna take to make, though. I know what I want to do with them, but for example, I don't know if completing an entry for one Maid is going to take me an hour, or two, or a whole day. Spending a whole day on one entry is unlikely, but I haven't exactly made a strategy guide before, so I only have so much to go on when I make these estimates.

 

Mostly, I just continue to be grateful this isn't proving to be the massive slog I was worried it'd be, even through most of writing out the guide for Act 1. I try to avoid talking about my income because I feel like I'm either begging or trying to guilt-trip money out of people, but it's not easy to keep going when I'm watching my income backslide almost every month. Combine that with making a strategy guide feeling significantly less fulfilling than making a game is, and I don't think it's much of a stretch to understand how ready I am to get started on the next project. 

Speaking of, the public poll for my next project is currently up on Patreon and Subscribestar. The vote is very heavily skewed in one direction right now, but if you have an opinion about what my next project should be, now is the best time to let me know what that opinion is. 

Maids & Masters (& Finishing Act 2 of the Strategy Guide)

Well, it's a good thing I gave myself the time I did. I haven't run into any issues, but the weekend had me much busier than I expected to be, so even acknowledging that I'm taking things a little slower than I otherwise would've, Act 2 of the strategy guide still isn't quite done.

It's close, though. I should have the third Haunt done either today or tomorrow, get the third Freeze done on Thursday, and then I actually have Friday just to address any formatting issues that have sprung up in the 100+ new pages that have been added. Which is a good sight better than thinking it's ready to go then realizing the page count is off and some pages are blank for some reason and spending an extra few panicked hours trying to get that fixed so I could actually post the dang thing like I did with the "test build" for act 1.

 

In other news, if you aren't already paying attention to my Patreon and/or Subscribestar, now is a great time to start. The public poll for my next project is up, and while the winner does already seem pretty clear, it's going to be running for at least two more weeks. If you have an opinion about what I should make next, get over there and give it to me.

 

That's pretty much all there is to say for now. I'll save new guide stats for Friday when I put up the next "test build." In the mean time, I'll be busy being grateful that I'm only roughly a week behind schedule on my initial projections for how long the guide would take to make and that I was very wrong about a later guess that expected me to take a year or longer to make it. I'm still chomping at the bit to get to work on my next game, and gears are already turning thinking through mechanics and how I want the game to play.