[Regarding Release & News]


I know.. some of you may be thinking here we go again. >.< Let's just dive into the main details and then I'll fill everyone in on what my personal situation is like right now. (Hence all the madness in the past weeks.)

The big thing to announce in order to simplify things and wrap up the extreme madness that is episode 5 content. We're going to roll everything together in one final release for this month set for January 31st. This will include everything that remains for episode 5.

Why are we suddenly deciding to do this instead of v0.20 pt 3 and then pt 4?

Well.. I think even if we did release the rest of pt 3 by tomorrow. It'd be a week's difference to provide the content for pt 4. Not to make things more confusing.. It just feels like it'd be best to roll everything together into one last release and make everyone happy ideally, so that's what we're rolling with.

If for any reason, the time difference with Substar and my timezone rolls us into February 1st while I'm releasing the last part of episode 5 content. I will personally send out the exclusive download links to everyone myself to ensure you gain access for January's content release. <3

Public release will be the same day, v0.20 pt 3's content and we'll try to offer a tiny bit extra with that. February would see the differences between public vs support releases back to normal with v0.21 for supporters, rest of v0.20 content for public. Then v0.22 for supporters with v0.21 for public in March, etc.

Why the sudden change of plans?

I'm going to try my best not to rant on, but bear with me. I don't often talk about my personal life, as I'm not one for sharing too much openly in that regard, but I feel the need to shed some light on what we've been dealing with while I'm still trying to keep a leveled head and work on the project and school classes.

I live with my Brother and his gf in a house that's very old and the short of it is that the place has had a lot of problems that require a handyman. Which my Brother is not.. So, recently a lot of things have suddenly chain reacted one after the other. As we try to fix one problem, two more appear in its place. >.<

One of the first issues we've dealt with this Winter is that our furnace has been broke, which means we've been using space heaters and other means to keep warm in our bedrooms. Just our bedrooms. If we go into any other area of our house right now, it is about the exact same temp as it is outside. (Ranging between -10 to 30.) 

For perspective, if we leave any bottled water outside of our bedrooms. It will freeze solid in our house.

So, our first issue was figuring out about the furnace. Which presented us with two options. One being that we get a custom ordered part that's $1,700usd, which might or might not be the issue. Even if it isn't the fix, we'd be stuck with the part and down that money. The other option is sink $4,000 on average for a brand new furnace and costs to get it all installed on top of that, which is just too much out of our budget right now to fix.

Our next issue during the Winter has been power outages, which goes without saying in freezing cold temperatures.. Its deadly to not have any of our heat sources or power. Luckily... Knocking on wood with my bad luck recently. We do have our power fixed after we went without for a couple days and had someone come out to do a temp fix with our power line.

The recent issue on top of this mess, is that this past week.. Our water pipes froze since we have no way to keep them heated given our situation. We crossed our fingers that with our pipes freezing, that it'd hold out, but we had one pipe burst already and thankfully. We were able to turn off our main water line valve to prevent any flowing water that's thawed to not continuously flow through our house.

Now, just within the last two days.. We noticed that the pipe that leads to our main shut off valve is also busted wide open on a curved part of the line. Thankfully its completely frozen right now, but we can see a good 3-4cm opening on that pipe that is blocked by frozen water for now.. 

We've spent a good part of our day earlier today trying to patch this exposed pipe with anything and everything, because we don't know where our outside water main valve is located to shut our water off leading into the house up to that other valve that's already off. >.<

We have to hope that the pipe doesn't thaw enough to spray and flood our basement or cause other issues from now until tomorrow... But we're calling people first thing in the morning to see if we can get someone out to the house in order to locate the outside main valve and shut off access to any water coming into our house. 

That means we're now also without any water other than bottled water to use until our insurance company also gets back to us tomorrow about the burst pipes and see if they can cover even half of the costs to get things back to "normal". So, now we're currently going to a nearby laundry mat to do clothes and if we want to shower/bathe, we have to go to our parent's place. We can't wash any dishes or pots/pans to cook at the moment and anything that requires water, you get the idea..

Again, I don't typically share a lot of personal stuff and the only reason I'm sharing this stuff is to help shine some light on what our perspective of living has been like this Winter. I'm not asking for anyone to pity us, I'm simply just trying to be transparent about why this Winter between December and this month has been crazy on top of my other daily needs with school courses and chores, besides the project work.

Despite all of this madness, I've been trying to keep things moving along regardless. It's just that some of these issues with our situation are real concerns to take care of instantly and on the fly, unexpected and so.. I hope by being a bit more open with this information. It helps explain things as we try to keep the project stuff moving along steadily.

Edit: 02/02/2024 (Added the events of our basement flooding the day after, etc.)

I'll just copy/paste what I wrote in the Discord Server, because I've already typed it out many times now with talking to people about it.


I woke up yesterday to our basement flooding with about a foot of standing water, having to on the fly make calls to both our city water people who said they couldn't shut off the outside water line unless it was in the middle of a emergency. Then, during that.. They flip flopped and said it still isn't their problem, that I needed to call for a emergency plumber instead while watching the water rise.

2 hours later, the plumber arrived. Not their fault in any of this.. But my Brother, his gf and I are all beyond livid with the water people. We warned them the day before, that our main was frozen and had a burst in the pipe before our shutoff valve in our basement. (So, we couldn't shut anything off even if we wanted to in the house.)

Between handling that and making calls for nearly 7 hours, documenting our flooded basement in hopes that insurance will even step in. (Since our luck has been terrible with them before.) Yesterday was my tipping point. Between having a panic attack, breaking down mentally and physically over the situation. It just wasn't a good day... I'm so worn out even today and know we still have to get someone from the insurance company to come assess the damages and go from there.

(Back to the plumber, they told me that they're not even allowed to carry the special tool to access the outside water main boxes in the ground. So, at that point its supposed to be the water people, because that's how they'd shut you off for not paying your water bill from that access point?)

The plumber thankfully in the midst of all that chaos, found that we do have one other shutoff valve in our basement, which is the one with the meter and I assume the water comes in through a pipe from the foundation of the basement? Now, if anything happened to that area.. Then we really have no other shutoff except the one outside and we're at a standstill to figure out who's responsible to come and shut that off for us.

Because the last thing I need is to have another panic attack in the middle of everything going on and trying to argue over the phone with who I'm supposed to get out here in that situation...

Since all of this had happened, I woke up the following day and to keep it short.. It felt as if I've been hit by a truck physically and mentally. My breathing felt off, chest, back and other areas were sore and worn out. It didn't even dawn on me until after my visit to the doctors office, that adrenaline + panic attack has this kind of effect in the days or weeks afterwards.. >.<

Even 5 days now since then, I feel fatigued. Its like being sick with a mild cold without the cough, stuffy nose, but that same kind of tiredness and just feeling out of it.

What didn't dawn on me in the moment of the chaotic situation was that I had stood in a foot of water while touching our circuit breaker in order to shutoff power to the basement to prevent more problems. Not even realizing until after the fact, just how seriously terrible things could've been if I was shocked in that moment. (They say, even a little bit of moisture on your fingers while turning breaker switches on/off can shock you and be dangerous, let alone standing in water and doing it..)

I'm counting my blessings and realize that all my luck has probably been spent in that one moment to prevent what could've happened.

The main thing I want to get across is that I am okay, but I've been trying to take things slow and not over exert myself after that episode happened.. I'm still not back to normal yet, but I'm improving since then. I'm just hoping the fatigue goes away, cause its been rough.

Our basement is drained, cleaned and disinfected now.. Thanks to my Brother and his gf handling it and preventing me from helping for good reason. The same plumber that came out, is coming out this week to inspect the pipes and fix everything for that. So, one step at a time with the house troubles and everything.