And now a word from our sponsors

So, news.
Not much progress on Redus, between Borderlands, Civ BE, Sunset Overdrive, Star Citizen and soon Halo taking up my free time, not to mention Arrow, SHIELD, Korra, Castle and so on sapping those few leftover minutes each night, I am fully booked. So what's the news? Well, I got a raise, a new boss so I can now change my hours and I moved out recently. All of this means that when the gaming season dies down I will have more free time than I have had in months and the freedom and flexibility to work openly and even during the week if I want.
I know this hiatus has been annoying for those of you still interested in this project and I know it has been selfish of me, but it has been nice having a normal few months. My isolation after everything that happened damaged a lot of my relationships and I have had to work at making things right, but I think I'm finally getting there. I'm happy in my new place and based on how much effort I put into Redus the last time I felt like this, I predict a brighter future for the game. With any luck, this time next year it should be mostly finished (with a fully completable version well before then, fingers crossed).

What a difference a downdate makes

Following up from last week, I've been looking at ways to get RAGs 2.4 working again and to my surprise, today it did! (No idea why)
Unfortunately Redus still wasn't working, but now that the designer was I tried loading a backup copy I'd made. Still no luck. Out of desperation I tried loading up the pre-bugfix copy of version 4 and for some bizarre, unknowable reason that did the trick. I've re-squashed those bugs and so for now at least I have a working, editable copy of the game, yipee hooray!

This is the first time I've had the game running on my new computer and the first thing I noticed was how different the images look, my old monitor has sub-hd resolution whilst my new one is currently at 1080p. I was not pleased by the change and some of the pictures are downright horrible compared to their acceptable appearance they had before. By coincidence I am currently in the middle of a 30 day free trial for the latest version of Adobe Photoshop so I can use this opportunity to both standardise and improve the images where possible, GIMP handles the basics fine but lacks the advanced tools and filters that make the difference.

So that's what's up this week. Progress is going to be slow over the next year but I want this next update to finally add at least one good ending and to introduce some more adult-oriented content to balance out the deepening story and care-free humour.

It isn't my fault for once!

Alright, finally decided to get some Redus done this weekend, started up RAGs, opened the game and... crash. Tried again and the file is unreadable.
No problem, I've had lot's of experience with RAGs crashing in the past so I have plenty of backup copies. Grab one and it is also unreadable.
Tried some other games and all of the had the same problem so it must be RAGs rather than my game.
Install a later version and try again with the same results.
Annoyed now, downloaded and installed version 3 and tried that, success! Hideous and irritating but it works and my game is back into the development zone right? Nope.
I already knew that version 3 uses html to define the text colour so that I was expecting, what I wasn't expecting is that none of my javascript works and when I go to the rags site to find out why the forums are inaccessible.
I finally get to some of the relevant topics through direct links only to find that there shouldn't be a problem with any of my code, no reason I could find anyway.
Then the designer went and crashed on me again.
I have now spent four hours trying to find ways around these issues and frankly I can't be bothered right now. Has anyone else had any problems with Javascript in RAGs 3? Any ideas why even basic commands such as [len(variable)]  have stopped working? Also the game is no longer showing the time in the status bar, just error 1 instead. Every time I press the test javascript button on any of my code the designer crashes so I can only test it by actually running the game.
For now I'm going to play Titanfall to cool off for a while.

Not much ado about nothing

Summer is almost over so here is a honest status report:

Between Star Citizen and Titanfall my free time is pretty much fully booked for the next few weeks and with Pokémon, Civilization: Beyond Earth, Borderlands The Pre Sequel, Super Smash Bros, Sunset Overdrive and Halo The Master Chief Collection all on the horizon (and I'm probably missing a few more) I expect it will stay that way for a long time. I bought a new PC around May and I still haven't even reinstalled RAGs so as you can imagine, Redus hasn't really been on my mind for a long time and with 45+ hour working weeks and upcoming driving lessons I can't imagine I'll be working on the next update any time soon. I'm not going to say that I will start up again in a few months or anything as I don't know anything for sure right now. Instead I'm going to install the designer now and if and when I get the urge to do a few hours here and there I will.
Regular updates are a thing of the past now, my time is just too valuable to me. When I get that creative drive back I will prioritise this above all other projects I have (and there are a lot, I have almost 20 notepads full of ideas, short stories and even a whole pad dedicated to a fantasy novel I was working on, in comparison Redus was about 40 pages and that was for 5 games). I expect it would take roughly 200 hours to finish this one so it isn't too far off in terms of actual hard graft but most of what is left is narrative which is far harder to write, especially the intimate scenes.

As always I will keep you posted as and when I make any progress, there may be a gap in late September where I could fit in some work but no promises. I stand by what I have said in the past, this project will never be abandoned, even if it never goes beyond the one game.

This is not an update! (No really)

I just wanted to check-in, I know it's been a while but I'm not ready to lose my freedom again just yet, I just wanted to let you all know that I haven't forgotten about you and per my promise I will come back to this at some point in the next few weeks/months. I'm not going to just leave it and disappear. So while I'm here, what's been going on? Well for one thing, nothing major has happened to me or my family since I last posted! That's a big deal for me. Also I have a new computer now so although I don't have RAGS installed at the moment it should run faster and more stable, also since it supports a higher resolution than my old one I can see what everyone else sees when they play my game which should both speed up design a little and improve the conversations slightly. Yippee hooray!
As always thanks for sticking around, there should be a nice juicy gameless gap coming up once I'm done with Tropico V and Fire Emblem Awakening so with any luck I might just be able to bring myself to get productive again.
I'll be back.

I think that went rather well, don't you Sebastian?

With the release of hotfix 0.4.0.1 or whatever I'm deciding to call it, it seems that there were fewer bugs reported than I had expected. Still under 1,000 downloads but plenty of interest nonetheless. I will be taking this weekend off and possibly next weekend as well so I can catch up with old friends whom I have neglected off late before I get to work on 0.5. I'll still be around to address any comments, queries or concerns and if any major bugs are reported I will release another fix but otherwise, see you all in a few weeks!

With this new shell softener, only the toughest bugs stand in our way!

Bugfix is live @ http://www.4shared.com/file/JvSmP-nJba/Redus_E1_-_A_Touch_of_Frost__0.html

Fixes include:
Spelling mistakes and missed words reported by Blubbif
The club should no longer be accessible pre-change
Cameron Clark (the Hall of Records receptionist/manager) has his reaction back! It turns out it was deleted during a crash last week and I must have restored to an earlier version than expected.
If you've spoken to Jenny post-change her phone conversation should reflect that, I had accidentally selected less than or equals rather than less than during a condition so it played the same message regardless.
If Jenny calls you back you should be able to talk about her findings later on in the week, I'm not 100% sure this one is fixed but there was a condition still active that was no longer relevant that would explain the erroneous behaviour

These bugs were reported but are not fixed yet:
The dock manager ignores your gender change, after looking through his conversations it will take much longer to write his reactions than I had hoped so I will push this back to 0.41
Kues reported an end-game bug, due to the complexity of the final scene and the lack of conclusive content the work required to find and fix this bug is excessive at this time, I will keep the report logged and will get to it once I get back to work on the endings. Expect this fix in 0.5

Any further reports of bugs or mistakes are appreciated and where I can I will release bugfix versions like this for the next few weeks if required, after that any reported issues will be fixed in future major(0.5) or minor(0.41) releases. Thanks to all for your help and continued support.

Well that was a disaster, here is a release then!

After six hours without a single download I've decided just to release 0.4 publicly, I had intended on getting some feedback before letting everyone at it but even with a higher than average pageview count today not a single copy was shifted. I could've held off for a couple of days to give more people the chance to get it early but if I'm going to get the number of testers required to make this work asap I have to look elsewhere. Sorry to anyone reading this when this is the first chance you've had to grab the test build but the numbers are just too low for this to be feasible. On the bright side, you still get to play 0.4 and with more players, the bugs will be squashed much faster.

Well, here it is. I hope you enjoy: http://www.4shared.com/file/NvqUjit7ce/Redus_E1_-_A_Touch_of_Frost__0.html

As this is the same copy as the test version it is still likely buggy and I won't have a huge amount of time to fix it during the week so please, be patient and report any bugs you find. End game content remains the same as in 0.3

Now with updates on the go!

Well now that I can post on here from my phone I can let you guys know what is going on. I was away from my pc this weekend and will continue to be so until friday morning. Yes this is the family thing I mentioned previously. I should be free most of next weekend but since I'm losing nearly a week it's likely that I will be fairly busy catching up on stuff so although I will probably get some work done next weekend it won't be a lot. Still, with this out of the way I should be able to get back to normality soon enough.

Time is a most curious thing

I was hoping to get some work done by now but it's just been one thing after another, nothing major just lots of small things like needing to go out to buy something or running some errand or another, just general life things. That said it looks like next weekend could be a much larger problem, that family issue is likely to occur within the next few days and when it does it will take up the whole weekend. There's nothing I can do to prevent that, I really wish there was.
I may be able to get some work done tomorrow although I do have a couple more errands to run before Monday so we'll have to see. If I can work I will do so for as long as possible but if not... life is very chaotic at the moment, I am honestly putting as much free time into this as possible and will continue to do so until the update is done, after that I will likely take a break as feedback flows in before deciding on my next move.

It is as I feared

I tried to make time for Redus but there was nothing I could do, I am also expecting that this same situation will arise again at some point in the next few weeks. As ever I will keep you all posted. This is not going to turn into a major issue that takes weeks to resolve or anything so there is no need to worry, at most I could lose another weekend or two but no more than that. I should be able to get some work done on Friday and I currently have no plans for next weekend either so I should be able to get a few hours done then.

A little heads up

It looks like I'm going to be busy all day on Friday, Saturday and Sunday this weekend. If I can I will do my best to squeeze in some RAGS time but it is looking unlikely. If I can't I will try to redouble my efforts next weekend to make up for it. Just wanted to keep you all posted.
Yesterday was the blog's quietest day yet, even when I was inactive for weeks I was getting more traffic. It's not an issue I'm just a little curious, if anything it's good news for those of you who do keep coming back. I intend to release a test build of 0.4 on here at some point before the actual release on TFGS. I will not announce the test release until the day it goes live and it will only be there for a couple of days at the most depending on the number of downloads, in other words, those of you who check this blog regularly will be rewarded with early access. I will go into in more detail at the time but it will likely happen at some point in the next 8 weeks.
That's it for now, if I don't post anything this weekend I'll see you all next weekend (probably), tatty-bye!

There may be a day when I get some work done but it is not this day

I tried to get something done last night but I was shattered after one of the longest weeks of my life so all I managed to do was move the intro sequence into a timer to make it easier to edit in the future. The plan was to spend a good 5/6 hours on Redus today but apparently there is family coming to visit in the next hour or so, that's today gone. I'll try to get as much done on Sunday as I can, I plan on focusing on Sonia and if I get her done I will move onto Jenny or Rebecca.
I have booked next Friday off so I will try and get as much done next weekend as I can, no more adding new content or features, it's time to finish what I have and to start thinking about testing. I'm about 80% done as far as I can tell but it's writing left, no more research or images so if I get my head down I can make some real progress.
Expect an update tomorrow evening.

The proverbial spanner in the works

Just got a promotion! It's not all good news though, my hours are going up to 42 per week which means that Mon-Thurs I simply won't have the time to work on Redus and although I finish early on Fridays I will probably be too tired. Production will be shifting pretty much exclusively to weekends from now on, that could cause issues with the 5 day gap between modifications and that is assuming I work on it both days every weekend. I get more money but at a cost.
Don't get too worried, I've come back to this project after much bigger breaks than 5 days. I will try my best to keep production as fast as I can without burning myself out, I don't have any new games right now and there isn't much TV for a while so I have a reasonable amount of free time.

Good news everyone!

Thanks to everyone who informed me about the RAGS license, for those of you who, like me, were unaware the expiration does not prevent the continued use of the designer. I will be taking a few days off but I will get back on with it in the latter half of next week. Thanks for the continued support everyone!

An unexpected break

First of all today's summary; worked on Sonia, she's about half done now. I also went retro and rewrote loads of the generic "you found nothing" messages for inspecting rooms. Once Sonia is done I will be back to where I was before the single TF debate ended. Well, actually since I've done lots of small things as well I will be further along than that, plus since I have about 500% less work to do per character now things should go much more smoothly from here on out... Well except for one thing:

Monday is the one year anniversary of Redus. February 17th 2013 was the day I started working on it, back then it was little more than a demo of things RAGS could do with a very basic plot attached. It was called "What has science done?" and had just three rooms: The office, the street and the lab. Everything was built around this original game and the game file I am working on today is the same file I created back then. Why is any of this important? Well for one I think it is important to remember how we got to where we are today, to learn from our mistakes and experiences and there have been a hell of a lot of those in the past 12 months. I still haven't finished paying for that car accident even though I wasn't driving and I still think about what my sister would have said if she had ever found out how I spend my spare time. I'm still grateful that after so many months of rejection I finally have a job and I'm still grateful that my parents are letting me stay here until I have enough money to move out. There is something else that this anniversary means though.

On Monday morning my RAGS license runs out. My bank account is beyond empty and I don't get paid for another 6 weeks. I'm not going to ask for any money off you guys because this is my hobby, but it does mean that I'm not going to be able to work on Redus for a little while, not the whole 6 weeks, I should be able to get a little money before then but I doubt I can get any funds in the next week or two. As with all delays I ask for your continued patience and understanding.

Not to get anyone excited or anything, but I think I'm close to being able to release an update. It won't have all of the content I promised and there could be some pretty major bugs but I think I could have something playable around early April. No promises, but I think it is a very realistic goal. I'll let you guys know as soon as I renew my license, I'm busy all weekend so this is it until then.

Drive safely! Tim out.

Important News Ahead!

For those who have not yet done so, please head over to TFGS to vote in the poll as detailed here: http://www.tfgamessite.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4086&start=240#p144808

The future direction of Redus will be determined by it's results. The poll ends next Monday.

That is a little above average

650+ page views today and still climbing, just because of a post at TFGS. I guess there is still some interest in the game.
Busy day today so I couldn't get any more done on it even if I had felt like it, which I didn't probably the combination of Friday and rain. Even so, some of the ideas coming from the fans are giving me plenty to think about over the next few weeks. Hopefully that will be enough to draw me back into working on it. Any more ideas/suggestions are always welcome and very much appreciated, even if some of my feedback can seem a little harsh I am still endlessly grateful for it. Not only can it lead to great new ideas and getting me excited about the game again, it also shows that there are people out there who care about my work enough to give up a few minutes of their day to give me some useful feedback. These past two days may have marked a turning point in this whole sorry saga.

It's been a long time, getting from there to here

I was looking back at some old posts over at TFGS today and seeing how much progress I actually made before everything went so badly. I want to get thing going again so that I can at least get it to a point where people can complete the game even if there are still many loose ends left to tie up. Every time I try to work on it though I just feel that I'm throwing my free time away, I have a list of TV shows I want to catch up on, a bunch of games that I bought but haven't played yet and I can't remember the last time I read a book. I know I'm just repeating stuff I've already posted before but I hate going weeks without posting something.
I had forgotten about the mini-game I made for Halloween, something else I found in old posts. I've been checking it over to see how far I got with it (I never made any of the usual checklists to tell me what still needs doing so I had to run through the game several times). It is still missing a small number of pictures that I remember struggling to find, I also wanted to populate the game with some more furniture, that won't take long though. There are lots of bugs in the latter parts of the game and some tidying up to be done throughout, if I could find the pictures I could get it done in a day probably. The problem is that I never feel like working on it, the next time I get the urge to be creative I will try my best to finish it but I'm not giving a deadline for this one, I would only end up missing it again.
If anyone would like to help there is one image I was finding particularly difficult to locate; an apartment atrium, it has to either be at night or only feature artificial lighting, it would ideally have one door straight ahead and a room to the right which is the warden's room although depending on the angle of the image that shouldn't be necessary. I want it to be wider than a standard corridor image as it is an entrance hall of sorts but I don't want a reception desk as a hotel would have. I've actually lived in a number of places that would fit the bill nicely but I have no way of getting to them and I haven't been able to locate anywhere locally that would be suitable. I can always move things around a bit but I have yet to find pics online of anything even close to what I want. Any help would be greatly appreciated and can either be submitted anonymously or you can be credited in the game (you would also receive a mention in the "Appreciative Enchanter" book in the library in the main game.
I will get back to Redus, it's just a matter of time. Thanks for your patience.

Recovery is a painful process

First let's get this out of the way, I'm not planning on getting back to work on this stuff any time soon. I have to be in the mood to write and I haven't been in that headspace for some time. That said I did do a little work the other day, nothing to write home about just a little photo editing and tidying up a couple of things so I may begin doing bits and pieces every now and then, we'll have to see. I don't want to abandon Redus completely after the couple of hundred hours of work I put into it but if I don't release any new content in the next six months don't be surprised.

I have a job now, working full time for good money. It keeps me occupied and distracted and that's a lot better than what the booze was doing. There will likely never again be whole days I spend writing and that's okay, but it will mean any future content will take longer than before even if I do start doing regular work on it.

I know you guys have been waiting patiently for the update and I thankyou for your loyalty in that regard, but I have to say the silence is getting worrying. I can check how many hits the blog has each day but not how many of them were bots or repeat visits so I have no idea how many of you there are. Based on the number of previous comments there could easily be just two of you. I'd still keep the blog open I think even if no one was there but it does feel like I'm just writing to a few google bots some times. I have little enough desire to work on Redus these days as it is, seriously any input, suggestions, criticisms or whatever would go a long way to drawing me back in. I'm not stuck or anything like that, I just don't feel like there is any demand for this thing any more. I've had so much support from friends and family, we all have, but this used to be a fairly large part of my life and it's just faded so much I can barely remember why I used to enjoy it so much.