No update today.
A couple of days left. 
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It’s the final countdown
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No update today.
Not great progress today since I had to prepare for my trip for the most part.
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No update today.
Two more days.
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No update today.
Tomorrow.
Final prep for my trip took more time than I expected, but at least I should be able to work a lot tomorrow since everything vacation related is done now. Unfortunately it looks like I won’t be able to finalize the entire “event” as I had really hoped. Probably only one branch of the three(which means not everyone gets to see their favorite characters as options I’m afraid, and will have to wait for when I return. Still, there are three major variations of that one branch so it should be something at least). I’ll know for sure only after I run out of time.
One thing that is perfectly clear is that I really need a deadline, so I’ll be switching to a “once a week update” once I get back. More on that once I post the update(or quite possibly a final post on the day that I leave, to maximize working hours). Short version of it is, as mentioned a few posts above, I should’ve started the finalization process much earlier since without a deadline I can’t seem to get anything properly set to stone, no matter how much I want to. Only the harsh cruelty of a deadline forces me to go “okay, it’s done now, no matter what, have to lock everything in place and move on”. With one update per week, that should keep the deadline close enough that I can’t ignore it, but far enough that I won’t go crazy. I’ll still post daily, though. 
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Will miss your daily updates 
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Update today.
NOTE, I barely had time to test it. Went through 500 random tests without breaking so it should be fine. Also went through it once by hand.
THEREFORE: If you’re paranoid about your saves, you might wanna wait, and especially you might NOT want to save over any of your saves if you try this one, might be buggy, who knows.
Given that I’ll have to leave for me plane within an hour, I’ll keep it brief.
(Also, I worked on this for 18 hours straight with no rest in between. Yes, I worked through the entire night and so on. It’s fine though, I can sleep on the plane and there’ll be timezone lag anyway so whatever)
Okay, things did NOT go at all like planned.
Good news is, there’s an update.
Bad news, only 25k or so in all.
Remember when I said one branch with three variations? This is just one of those three, which sucks.
Finalizing it took me so, so much more than I expected that it’s crazy, and it was impossible to finalize the others. I can’t believe it took me 18 gosh darn hours to do this little even when it was polished.
I even had to cut some parts off since I literally didn’t have time to finish them, so I’ll have to add then once I get back.
While I don’t think the batch is bad, it certainly isn’t at all what I wanted to post.
One year’s wait for this? Awful, awful!
Anyway, to happier subjects.
Once I get back from Japan(probably back to posting somewhere around early June), I’ll operate very differently.
1 week per theoretical update, rather than a day or a month or nothing. It might be a good deadline to act on. I can only hope.
For those people who only read stuff when I post an update, super long story super short: Had corona twice, norovirus once, had anxiety, had too much ambition, etc. The usual.
The contents of the update:
Chief Chaska/Carrington variation of the “command branch”
What will come hopefully relatively soon once I get back:
Mari Badr variation of the “command branch”
Mouse variation of the “command branch”
Stillwater variation of the “assault branch”
Sheriff variation of the “assault branch”
Generic variation of the “infilrtration branch”.
Then several SPOILER scenes.
All of these have been polished(as per my personal usage of the word). As is very clear to me today, polishing is very, VERY far away from finalizing.
Still, it should be entirely doable to make each of the above mentioned things done at a rate of 1 per week.
That is all.
If anyone has any questions or comments, feel free to post them.
Won’t be able to reply until I get back since I have limited access to the internet, plus I don’t actually remember my password here and I just got a new phone so I can’t log in with it.
Hopefully the majority of you who try it out will have fun with it!
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You know, as long as this WIP is, starting from the beginning still isn’t the worst thing. You did all that polishing work; be a shame if we didn’t appreciate it properly. 
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Ayo?!?!?!?
Congratulations and enjoy your trip!
Vending machines and convenience stores 
If ya want it/not on a super budget/didnt know: portable wifi devices are a thing in japan and seem affordable. (I have no experience with this kinda thing btw)
But disconnecting could make the trip more enjoyable possibly 
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I played this through today for the first time and it’s amazing!! All the characters have such depth to them that they feel like real people. The setting is like taking Galbraith’s “The Affluent Society” and then married his hypotheses to an Orwellian dystopia.
Also, whenever there was a scene with Mari Badr I could practically hear bubbly Jpop following her around like some sort of earwormy character theme. Something like Shingo Mama no Oha Rock or Genshoku Gal Hade ni Yukube or the like.
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Alright, I’m back from my vacation! (more on that below for those who’re interested, first some on-topic matters. )
Since this post is super long, here’s a short version: New plan is to write a scene a week, to keep a good balance between getting stuff done and not getting anxiety over it. This will continue for as long as it works.
Cyberpolice stuff:
Work will continue soon, perhaps as early as tomorrow.
First off I’ll probably work on the previous scene a bit more, since I want to add the stuff back in that I had to take away/simplify in order to get the update out “in time”.
The plan is for this to take a few days at most, hopefully less than a week(especially since I’m having another trip next week, I’ll be gone from around the 8th to the 11th).
After that I’ll finalize the other variants of the segment, hopefully one per week. Meaning it’ll take a while.
Once that’s done, I’ll finalize the next few scenes, probably at the same pace.
Thus, IF everything goes well, I’ll post an update a week for the next few months.
Anyway, at that point I’ll start working on the Major Update.
Since the Major Update is pretty much a “make sure everything is in place before I advance to the final stage of the project”-kind of deal, it’ll be done a bit different from usual.
At first I’ll make the various sub-plots that I skipped over a long time ago. They’ll be done in a relatively linear fashion(meaning the scenes will follow each other, but their place in the overall story will be a bit vague and confusing at this point, it’ll be fixed later. Still, they should be coherent enough to be played through without much trouble).
This is to allow for easier feedback from you folks since I need to know the sub-plots are interesting enough and so on. Essentially you’ll be able to “continue” your current save-files backwards in time(kinda), but eventually all the saves will have to be wiped(as the Major Update will restructure parts of the game and so on). Also, you can play through all of the sub-plots at this point even though in the final version it’s just one per playthrough.
Anyway, once all three(maybe four, but probably three) sub-plots have been done, I’ll write a bunch of supplementary scenes that will be inserted into the story with the Major Update, but will be pretty unrelated and maybe confusing at first. Feedback on those is needed too, so that’s the way it has to be unfortunately.
No idea how long the sub-plots or the supplementary scenes will take, but probably months. Hopefully not years.
Once all of that stuff is done, I’ll compile the Major Update so that all of this new stuff will make sense in the narrative, and I’ll probably clean away some dead/pointless/obsolete parts of the story while I’m at it.
And after that, I’ll start working on the Finales. (likely two separate ones for the main story, each with a bunch of different endings. The sub-plots will have their own finales too, so it’s a decent mix of stuff for each playthrough).
Sure seems like a lot of stuff to do, doesn’t it? 
I’m glad that you see it that way. Still, with how long it is, I’d advice to wait until the Major Update comes out some fine day.
Admittedly it’s way longer than I originally intended, but that’s the way it has to be. For my next project, whatever it will be, I’ll definitely try to make it way, way shorter. (but first I’ll have to finish Cyberpolice. )
Yay! Thanks for the praise! Always nice to see people enjoying my work. 
Never heard of Galbraith or his work, but a quick googling already tells me I probably should read it. Kinda weird that this is the first time I’ve ever seen it mentioned, since I’m no stranger to stuff like that.
.
That is pretty much the atmosphere I tried to invoke in some of her scenes, so it’s good to know it’s working. 
Vacation stuff:
Short version is, I went to Japan with three of my friends for three weeks.
The first two weeks were more of a sightseeing trip than a vacation, since we traveled a LOT. Saw so many castles and shrines that I’ve had my fill for the next few decades.
A few volcanoes and mountains too.
We got a Japan Rail Pass which let us travel all over for free(well, the rail pass itself was pretty expensive, but it was well worth it). Local public transport still had to be paid with the very convenient Suica card.
For the first 4 days or so we stayed in the Shibuya and Shinjuku areas of Tokyo, making day trips to places like Enoshima, Kamakura, Hakone,
After that we went to Kumamoto for 4 days and toured the local places.
After that a day in Miyajima, coincidentally just a day before the Hiroshima G7 summit started, which made a few things more annoying than they would’ve been otherwise.
Then Kyoto for 4 days, visiting places like Himeji, Osaka, etc.
And after that, Matsumoto for 4 days with the same routine.
Finally back to Tokyo(Akihabara) for the final 5 days where the actual vacation part began.
Naturally I spent most of my time going through the various stores and considering what few things I could buy and take home with my limited luggage space.
All in all a really fun trip. Probably walked more during those three weeks than the previous year combined.
Interestingly the biggest culture shock was the fact that there were no garbage bins anywhere. And I mean ANYWHERE. There were days where I couldn’t find a trash can anywhere except my hotel for the entire 14 hours I was out and walking across a city and some tourist spots. Lots of places to deposit bottles, but none for trash.
Very different from how it is in Finland, where you can’t walk 20 meters without seeing a public trash can.
Thanks, I did.
This is pretty much exactly what we did, we got two wifi-hotspot devices that made life a lot easier for the group, even if we divided at times.
Not that there was a real need for it, public wifi spots were really common. Train stations, hotels, shopping centers, tourist spots… long distance trains too! Pretty much anywhere you’d want to use wifi you could.
The convenience stores sure were convenient. Lawson, Family Mart, and Seven-Eleven all were used extensively. Didn’t really see much of a difference between them personally, but I’m sure each had their own unique merchandise and so on.
As for vending machines, I honestly expected there to be more of the unusual ones. In practice drink vending machines were everywhere, but even snacks ones were pretty rare, and anything else was extremely rare. The weirdest one I found was a sort of gambling vending machine where you could put 1000 yen in and got a random electronic device, ranging from an electric toothbrush to a Nintendo Switch! I got an air moisturizer which was good enough I guess.
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No update today.
Didn’t start working yet, still had unpacking and souvenir and picture organizing and so on to do from the trip. Probably tomorrow.
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No update today.
Alright, started working again, though mostly re-familiarizing myself on what I wanted to do for now. Shouldn’t be a problem to get it done by Wednesday(since I’ll be leaving on Thursday relatively early on. Back on Sunday). Anyway, just adding a few things to the latest update to make it the way I want, then working on the next variant.
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Never heard of an air moisturizer in my life 
Sounds like yall had a blast 
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That’s fair I guess, I dont push anything of course but if you do implement ROs, I’d like Bailey or Carr as one.
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No update today.
Finalized a few things. Update won’t be too big since it’s mostly to warm me up on the idea of “an update a week”. As mentioned, pretty much just a tweak of the previous update.
It’s also known as a humidifier, I think. Anyway, probably a thing for certain climates.
And yes, we had a blast.
Not to worry, Carr will definitely be an RO once I implement them(which won’t happen for a while, unfortunately). Bailey will depend on how many ROs I’ll be putting in the game, she’s more in the “maybe” category.
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It says it lacks in romance right now, does that mean there’s none? or just that there are less options?
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No update today.
Bunch of stuff finalized. Update tomorrow, or maybe the day after if I feel really pressed.
Depends how you define romance, but personally I’d say there’s none(at least compared to what I intend to add later on).
I’m sure some people might call the various dialogue options romantic in nature, but there’s no “romance” as such of any sort, yet.
Ultimately there will be 4 or more in-depth romances with their own scenes and variations etc. At present there are zero such scenes.
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No update today.
I figured that since I have no responsibilities tomorrow before I leave, I might as well use the time to improve on the update. Thus I won’t upload it today. Will be posted tomorrow, earlier than usual due to my schedule.
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I’m so excited for tomorrow
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