No update today.
Deadline for next update: 24th of September.
Had a fair amount of time to invest in working today.
10 Likes
No update today.
Deadline for next update: 24th of September.
So far progress has been quite excellent. I’ll refrain from making too optimistic estimations for now. 
9 Likes
No update today.
Deadline for next update: 24th of September.
Was busy, no work today.
9 Likes
No update today.
Deadline for next update: Not tomorrow.
Great progress so far, but won’t be ready by tomorrow. Not sure how much there’ll be left time-wise, since I’ll probably get quite a bit done tomorrow, so I’ll post the new deadline then.
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I’m sorry, that made me laugh.
4 Likes
No update today.
Deadline for next update: 29th of September.
Got a lot done and it’s looking good. Still, since I tend to vastly underestimate the time it takes to get things done, I’m going to say Friday. It doesn’t look like there’s all that much left, but better safe than sorry. If it’s finished earlier, great, if not, at least I don’t have to push it back again.
Better to laugh than to be frustrated at this point. 
7 Likes
No update today.
Deadline for next update: 29th of September.
Not terribly much done today due to other business.
6 Likes
No update today.
Deadline for next update: 29th of September.
Fair progress. Probably closer to Friday than not.
8 Likes
No update today.
Deadline for next update: 29th of September.
Yeah, probably on Friday. Or maybe a day later if things get really busy. (to think Friday was a pessimistic estimate )
10 Likes
No update today.
Deadline for next update: Hopefully tomorrow.
Chances for tomorrow look okay, which means maybe or maybe not.
10 Likes
it was interesting, thanks
1 Like
No update today.
Deadline for next update: Maybe tomorrow, probably Sunday.
Alright, it’s almost done now. Just a few things to finalize, plus I have to make all the code work(written in “pseudocode” for now, but converting it to real code isn’t all that hard since it’s just scripting. Theoretically at least. 
).
This time the code is quite an ordeal, since this is easily the most code intensive part I’ve written for the entirety of Cyberpolice. A few complicated *gosub commands, and lots of *if(((Z) and (Y)) and ((X) and U))) type of things, a zillion states that can overlap each other, etc.
(the code probably takes as much space as the regular writing, usually it’s maybe 1/6 at worst)
I’ll also have to test that it all works as intended in practice, not just in code, including some unlikely combinations of choices, and that will take some time, and some balancing to make sure nothing’s blatantly too good.
In retrospect I guess it should’ve been obvious that the testing’d take time too since I can’t just click through it all that easily, I have to actually pay attention to the choices and the resulting consequences.
Anyway, very close to done, Sunday at latest I’d imagine, but it’s really hard to estimate since it’ll depend on how well everything works. If all goes perfectly, it’ll be tomorrow, though it’s probably safer to bet on Sunday.
And once this part is done, it’s almost time to wrap up this year(and almost a half) long segment.
(just the final pass on all the files where I’ll be adding the missing stuff and the post-operation stuff. Which’ll presumably take a week(or two or three given my usual delays). After that, it’s fresh stuff again)
Thanks for playing and posting.
12 Likes
No update today.
Deadline for next update: Tomorrow
Yup, sure enough, it’s a lot of tedious work. Still, in some ways it’s easier to do than the actual writing since it’s a totally different kind of thinking.
Among other things I spent an hour trying to wrap my head around a complicated bit of code, and in the end realized that there was absolutely no need for it to be as complicated as I had originally thought.
Should be ready tomorrow. Most of the coding is now done, but I do need to test it and that’ll probably reveal some stuff that doesn’t work at all like it should. The testing part is a lot more work for this section than usual. Always the chance that I don’t have enough time to do it, of course, depends on how well it’ll work during testing.
Although I’m not a code-master, I think it’d probably be easier to do this in real code rather than with scripting, since some stuff seems impossible to script in the ChoiceScript language and I have to make absurd workarounds for them, which is quite a bit of work and results in all kinds of thought-errors. Then again, maybe that stuff is possible, but I don’t exactly want to crawl through the wiki to find out how.
I’m also trying to balance making the code look readable vs actually writing the code. Should I spend two hours just brute-force coding something, or actually thinking up an elegant way to do it? Not always an easy answer, since both can result in all kinds of errors with all the variables etc.
Anyway, things are proceeding well enough.
8 Likes
No update today.
Deadline for next update: Tomorrow
Annoyingly I started working way too late to get it done today.
Just a bit of the coding left and the testing, but that should be doable tomorrow.
(famous last words given my track record this year, but I’m still optimistic. If something goes terribly wrong with the testing, I might just take the error-prone bits away temporarily and finish them in the next update(since it’s going to be the final-lookover for the current segment anyway next). Nonsensical perhaps, but should be better for my mental health anyway Hopefully that won’t be the case though, but since tomorrow’s a weekday I won’t have super much time)
6 Likes
No update today.
Deadline for next update: Wednesday (October 4th)
Graah! Testing certainly didn’t go nearly as well as I would’ve liked. So poorly that I can’t even push out a badly working version. Really frustrating to fix bugs in this particular variant, since half of them didn’t show up as errors during randomtest as they’re logic-errors rather than typing errors. Technically it works, but it’d be a crime to upload it in the current state as only a few playthroughs would work as they should.
Realistically I don’t have much hope to get it done tomorrow since the testing is so slow, as I manually have to dig out the stuff to know if it works, then fix it, then dig it out again, etc.
Which is why I put it as Wednesday(and thus three weeks since last update. Sadness. To think I felt it was ready over a week ago. ).
I even checked out CSIDE to see if it’d be better for this type of work, and it definitely is(Using Notepad++ at the moment), but migrating the project there isn’t really feasible at the moment so I’ll have to bear with it. I might do it after the current segment is done, however.
On the plus side, since I did try out CSIDE I could get a really easy word count for the project so far. In all the files currently uploaded, it amounts to 1,000,000 words, though only 800,000 are “real words”. (not sure if it counts the comments as real words or code words, though). (also, 1,700,000 if you count ALL the files, including the ones not uploaded yet(and thus only done at a super-basic level, or ones that will be discarded, planning files, etc))
A good amount for sure, but thinking on the actual content in Cyberpolice, it feels strange that it’d be so much, since not all that much has happened really. 
11 Likes
No update today.
Deadline for next update: Tomorrow.
6 Likes
No update today.
Deadline for next update: Tomorrow, maybe.
Well, the testing is proving to be so much more of a chore than I thought. (had to re-code one part a few times to get it working properly, which isn’t that bad if it weren’t for the need to manually test it in-game. )
I’ll definitely be migrating to CSIDE once this is done. It should make some of the time-wasting parts a LOT quicker, from what I understand. Not so much for writing, but definitely for coding. Hasn’t been an issue so far in the project(miraculously, or maybe it’s telling of the simplicity of the code), but it really shows at the moment. (Been afraid to do it since supposedly it has bugs that might erase the whole project, but if I just make backups multiple times a day it’s probably fine).
Admittedly this is the first time I’ve made something this complex(and massive, over 15k words in code alone), but I didn’t expect it to be this much of a hassle. (fortunately shouldn’t happen again since I don’t think any other scene is planned to be anywhere close to this in style. There are a few which are code-heavy, but not to this degree)
I know I’m not great at evaluating when stuff is done, but with this kind of testing and re-coding it’s even harder than with raw writing.
Also, I hate that it’s becoming a “Deadline tomorrow” thing again, especially since it’s already “done”. 
Anyway, I hope it’s done tomorrow, but I really have no realistic way of knowing. Could be Friday, could be freaking Sunday for all I know. 
5 Likes
No update today.
Deadline for next update: This week.
Right, so it’s impossible to estimate how long it’ll take. This week for sure(as I’ll just remove everything that doesn’t work if it’s not ready by Sunday, enough is enough), but no idea which day, since simply put it depends on when there are no more bugs, and that I can’t say.
I’d love to have you readers test it for me, but that’d be way too frustrating for you.
But once it’s done, you’d better tell me if you find the teensiest thing not working like it should, since if there are any problems left once I deem it finished, those are the ones that I’ll never be able to find otherwise due to the absurd amount of combinations possible(combined with my not-so-great coding discipline). You’ll see soon enough.
8 Likes
But… that’d require actually knowing how it should work. Are you positive it’s that obvious?
If you don’t notice it, then it’s not a problem.
It’s really obvious I would guess. The kind of thing like “Wait a minute, I’m supposed to be able to do this, why can’t I?”
So, if you think you should be able to do something, or something happens that you think shouldn’t happen, please inform me.
I’m sure it’ll make more sense once you see how different the update is from the usual stuff I’ve made.
But ultimately, if the player doesn’t notice it, then it won’t detract from their enjoyment, so it’s fine. (even if I’ve spent too much time trying to make that stuff)
PS Once we’re out of this swamp I’m sure the posts I make here will be less negative too, since I won’t be tearing my hair out all the time. Perhaps even positive occasionally! 
9 Likes