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Done Day!!

It's a momentous day! Observe:   I finished the storyline for  Rorasuketo.  The last map was a roller derby montage in chapter 4. A nice way to wrap things up. The game is... in its most raw form, "finished." Now the tweaking and fixing begins in earnest. I've got a few testers lined up, but first, my husband and I are each doing a playthrough to ensure there are no major game-breaking glitches that will stop everyone in their tracks. My first export actually gave an immediate error upon launch. (RPG Maker scans for used and "unused" images upon export, with the option to exclude the unused ones. However, employing an image through a third-party plugin, like a HUD, can apparently appear as "unused." But the file is actually used, and RPG Maker only figures that out at launch. That's my best assessment, anyway.) I have found a few missing screen fade transitions and unwarranted outfit changes. Things like that. So... I think we're going to b...
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A little Lala on the nozzle.

  I've struggled to 3D model Lala for quite some time. In fact, I think Lala was one of my first models ever. As it turns out, going from 2D pixel art to an object is insanely difficult. This is probably the best take I've had so far! (The proportions always feel wrong.) We're going to try printing one out and see what she's like. Cross your fingers!
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To promote or not to promote?

Like most artist types, I'm not much for self-promotion, marketing, and other such things. I put out a comic book about 10 years ago and just kind of hoped it would vacate the shelves of one local bookstore on its own. I didn't do appearances or anything like that. I still have 20 copies or so (I had 50 printed) sitting in a box in a closet. With  Rorasuketo,  I recognize some degree of promotion needs to happen if I want it to be seen by anyone. I've done some webcasts and forum posts (and this blog), and I'll be doing a Mitten Kittens appearance - hopefully with co-writer Tiffany, by the way! I could probably be doing much more, but I find myself hesitant to really  go nuts. Our dutiful composer Nebyoolae asked, "Don't you believe in  Rorasuketo?" I do and I don't. I believe that  Rora  is a game for a certain type of person who's looking for a certain type of experience. I want to promote it so that person can find it, absolutely - but I don...
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Spaceballs: The Flamethrower!

  If you're wondering how you'll find the  Rorasuketo  table at Mitten Kittens in Lansing this October, keep your eyes out for the weirdos wearing purple Lala t-shirts. So far, we're only planning on distributing shirts to the immediate creative team and booth babes (well, the booth hunk, anyway), but I might toss a few fun ones in the order just in case a billionaire skydives into the immediate vicinity and says, "You're the creators of  Rorasuketo?  Give me a t-shirt right now and you can have the keys to my Ferrari." It's good to be prepared... to towel-snap a billionaire with a custom printed t-shirt. My latest Alpha 1.04 playthrough reads as 9.5 hours so far. That includes time spent hopping over to the other monitor to fix or change things. Throwing in a \.\. or two to let dialogue breathe, or making a note to give Wedge's hands two more pixels - that sort of fix, most of them. At one point, I did run into a game-breaking bug (I want to say the t...
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A blast from the past!

Our very talented composer, Nebyoolae (a.k.a. Michael Chadwick) unearthed a photo of me working on Rorasuketo in 2018. (Along with a couple early screenshots that I am too embarrassed to share at the moment.)   This is pre-transition, social media-consuming, roller derby-playing, long-haired Cam, two apartments and two cats ago. Kinda wild to think about how long it's been. A little "enhance! enhance!" on the background shows that I might have screwed up the formatting of a tileset - and that's why I am wearing that crazed expression. But what we're ultimately looking at is an unfinished  Barneston  - the fourth map in the story, and the main setting. Pretty crazy to imagine Barneston first bubbling out of the primordial ooze.
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But why Rora?

As I have mentioned, my husband recently played through the entire game. Over the last eight years, he's slogged through a few minutes of gameplay here and there when I politely commanded, or watched little snippets when I was particularly proud of a cinematic, but he's never seen the whole thing from start to finish until now. And I had to ask... did the ending make sense? Did it wrap things up? Do you feel satisfied that the story was complete? The answer to him, and so far one other tester, is "yes." All of my alpha testers so far have voiced that the mental health aspect of the game is what interests them - while story, dating, and RPG aspects have been more diverse interests. I find that really interesting, and also encouraging. So I feel like I'm on the right track. Because here's the thing.  The odds are extremely low that I will recoup the time, energy, and upcoming promotional costs of making this game. I have put in countless hours, plus I have a tea...
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Letting go of Achievements.

It's been a real struggle figuring out the SteamPipe documentation. I've been learning that the instructional videos from Steam itself have incorrect, outdated, or misleading information in them. (!) It took a lovely tutorial from a YouTuber to get me on track. Many thanks to AuroDev for putting that out there. I spent today trying to sort out how to make Achievements work with RPG Maker MZ. There are several different plugins/workarounds out there that promise such integration, one of which looked very promising. I even started to mesh it into the game... but I couldn't get it to work. Someone tried to have AI give me instructions, which I reluctantly followed with an enormous degree of distrust. There were a lot of very rocky moments here in Casa de Norcross as I raged my way through several misunderstandings. I've been told that I need to use my indoor voice when making futile verbal requests of my computer. There's really not enough documentation for these plug...
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