Some Changes on Argleton

Hello Everyone!
The latest version is coming, and it will have extraordinary and sexy new content!
I know it has taken a long time to be finished and polished enough to be released and this has made me reconsider quite a lot the way I have been working so far.
For now, the way I have been updating Lucky Paradox with four big releases that combined make up the ultimate version. This has been a bit confusing for many people, as they are constantly asking me through messages how each version works and what is the new content.
The delay with the latest version was not only due to the accident and the move, I think the problem was deeper and comes from my work process. I also believe that I can make the development much more agile and dynamic.
The working process has been like this so far:
  • First is written all the content with all the details, descriptions, and thoughts of each character. Being possibly the phase that takes more time to perform. Since this includes planning the content.
  • The second step is to do a complete editing and deleting between 60% and 80% of everything written. Deleting unnecessary things and all descriptions. I feel that, being an audiovisual medium, everything described can be shown and a huge amount of unnecessary descriptive or expository text is useless.
  • The third step is to do all the artwork for the version. Considering the descriptions and thoughts deleted in the previous step.
  • The fourth step is to program everything. This is the most agile phase of the whole process, since programming is something that is simple for me. However, it is the most exhausting phase since I usually do two or three sessions of more than 20 hours of insane continuous programming. This part is very limited for me since I am always out of time.
  • Finally comes the test phase. This takes a relative amount of time. Sometimes it is a very fast process or sometimes an extremely slow and frustrating process, as happened in version 0.6D.

In short, it is a 0% or 100% process. It is impossible to be able to do an update halfway through, because even if phase 1, 2 and 3 are complete at that time I only have the planning, writing and artwork finished, but nothing is programmed yet and consequently nothing is playable.
Version 0.6 exceeds the total of 90,000 words, not including everything that was deleted and translated. This may give you an idea of how hard it has been to finish this version xD
Last week I decided to design a remarkable new way of working, which allows me to be faster, save time in the writing phase and be more dynamic in the content.
The concept is to divide the content in very small and finalized phases. Not to write everything in detail, but to work on the art, writing and programming simultaneously.
Also, to avoid confusion, concept of versions divided by letters is dead from now on and we will return to the typical Alpha, Beta and Final.
As always, each version will include new content with each of the main girls, as well as a lot of new secondary interactions, as it has been until now. The versions will not be as dense as they have been so far, but will be more compact, to reduce testing times.
Tiers will have access as follows:
  • Novas and Alters: Unique access to Alpha, Beta and Final.
  • Candidate: Access to Beta and Final.
  • Citizen: Access to the Final two weeks before.
  • Friend: Access to the Final one week before.
  • Tourist: Access to the Final three days before.

I hope that this way the development of Lucky Paradox will be more constant and faster. The final releases will be between one to three months, as opposed to four to five as it has been so far, and it is also a better way to deliver new content to all those who have contributed to make Lucky Paradox a reality.
As always, I am wide open to suggestions and new ideas 😊
To finish, a small interface improvement has been made and increasing the amount of available slots to save by 100%, going from 6 to 12. This will be implemented in the public release soon 😊
Old:


New:

However, for now there is a visual bug with previously saved games, so the previous save image may be much larger than the new one, but it is only a visual bug and saving over the game will fix it. Your saved games will not be compromised or deleted.
That's all for now.
As always, thank you very much for everything and see you soon with more news!
Take care <3