Brad's Erotic Week (BEW) - S01, E07 (2017-12-04)

[NickNKVD]

Is bradseroticweek.rocks down right now?

[kexter]

Is bradseroticweek.rocks down right now?

Yep. The server issue either goes away or it will need Wolfschadowe's attention. In the latter case that could mean that it will only come back in 6-8 hours.

[JFR]

As Kexter mentioned, this is an issue that has been intermittently plaguing the site in recent weeks. It occurs at the data base level of the website hosting service and Wolf thinks it is related to memory overuse by an unknown member. He has been in contact with them and they are working the problem. I had thought it was worked out but this event, which started over 12 hours ago, is the worst one yet. I haven't been able to get in touch with him yet but have to assume he is aware and doing what he can.

More as I know it.

[moskys]

Hmmm...

First someone deletes Thompson Tower's footage, then the office's footage is also deleted and now 'an unknown member' keeps taking down the site. How convenient

[Wolfschadowe]

Is bradseroticweek.rocks down right now?

Someone mentioned cursed, right?

There is an issue with the Server, and the Web Host provider is dragging their feet a bit to get it resolved. No worries though, we have clean backups from less than an hour before the issue began, and it has no real impact to the development of Episode 7, other than the time it takes away from me to deal with the server issue, although most of that is dependent upon the web host, so I'm just waiting, and working on the episode. No ETA on when the forum site will be back up but it might last over the weekend.

Wolfschadowe

[JFR]

... No ETA on when the forum site will be back up but it might last over the weekend.

Wolfschadowe

So I guess that means I'm on vacation, right boss?

[Tao Dude]

... No ETA on when the forum site will be back up but it might last over the weekend.

Wolfschadowe

So I guess that means I'm on vacation, right boss?

No such luck, JFR, the site is back up as of this morning. At least a version of it...looks like the last post on there was Thursday in the Lunch/Dinner forum. Let the conjecture commence.

[JFR]

Well, this is the kind of post I don't like to do but I have promised to be straight with everyone so - no choice. Wolfschadowe just made a lengthy post on the BEW Forum explaining what remains to be done before we can get Episode 7 out to the public. I've quoted it in the spoiler below. Below that, I've quoted my follow-up post with my conjectures about possible release dates.

Ok folks,

Here's the nitty gritty of it. In another forum, I posted the steps needed for every page here: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=362&start=45#p3949

In our tracking board, all pages are summarized as cards, and each card holds an average of 5 pages. Keyword...average. Some cards hold 1 or 2 pages, others hold 20+ pages.

With that in mind, let's look at the current status, from beginning to end:

Read this as

X. Stage - Who is responsible - Average time per card, based on average time per page and average pages per card.
* Scene - # Cards in stage

So grab your calculators folks...if you are the numbers type.


Concept - Wolfschadowe - 15 minutes per card
Wednesday Club - 0
Wednesday Taxi - 0
Wednesday Home - 4
Thursday Coffee - 1
Thursday Office - 0
Thursday Evening Home - 6

Initial Story-boarding - Wolfschadowe - 25 minutes per card
Wednesday Club - 0
Wednesday Taxi - 0
Wednesday Home - 7
Thursday Coffee - 0
Thursday Office - 0
Thursday Evening Home - 0

Preliminary Logic - Wolfschadowe - 5 minutes per card
Wednesday Club - 0
Wednesday Taxi - 0
Wednesday Home - 0
Thursday Coffee - 0
Thursday Office - 0
Thursday Evening Home - 0

Image Creation - BEW Artists - 150 minutes per card
Wednesday Club - 0
Wednesday Taxi - 0
Wednesday Home - 7
Thursday Coffee - 0
Thursday Office - 0
Thursday Evening Home - 0

Image Post-work - BEW Artists - 5 minutes per card
Wednesday Club - 1
Wednesday Taxi - 3
Wednesday Home - 8
Thursday Coffee - 0
Thursday Office - 0
Thursday Evening Home - 0

Pre-writing - Wolfschadowe - 35 minutes per card
Wednesday Club - 0
Wednesday Taxi - 0
Wednesday Home - 18
Thursday Coffee - 0
Thursday Office - 0
Thursday Evening Home - 0

Writing - BEW Writers - 15 minutes per card
Wednesday Club - 0
Wednesday Taxi - 0
Wednesday Home - 18
Thursday Coffee - 0
Thursday Office - 0
Thursday Evening Home - 0

Path Modeling - Wolfschadowe - 30 minutes per card
Wednesday Club - 0
Wednesday Taxi - 0
Wednesday Home - 9
Thursday Coffee - 0
Thursday Office - 0
Thursday Evening Home - 0

Programming - BEW Developers - 20 minutes per card
Wednesday Club - 0
Wednesday Taxi - 0
Wednesday Home - 1
Thursday Coffee - 0
Thursday Office - 0
Thursday Evening Home - 0

Ready for Beta Test - BEW Testers - 1 week from last card arrival
Wednesday Club - 35
Wednesday Taxi - 36
Wednesday Home - 2
Thursday Coffee - 0
Thursday Office - 28
Thursday Evening Home - 0


So maybe someday we can sweet talk Kexter into building a real-time status page that lays all this out in a neat chart or something, but the end result is that there is about 170 hours of work left in this Episode before the Beta test can start. Beta test will last about 1 week, followed by 1 week of Early Access, followed by release to the general public.

So how long is 170 hours?
Hard to say. Remember, nobody works on the project full time. I try to put about 3 hours a day in on the project. Somedays it's only 1, others it's 6, so...
As for the Artists, Writers, and Programmers? Well, their availability varies as well, and I fill in any missing effort if the others aren't available due to things like life.

Another factor to consider is that the number is on the high side. Most of the cards are in various states of completion of their stage. For example, most of the pre-write cards are actually 1/3-1/2 way through the Pre-write process. Additionally, many have been written with placeholder images or logic already, and can be considered to be 1/2 or more done with writing, even though it's the next stage. In other words, the actual time remaining could be as low as 100 hours remaining,

One bad news item, depending on how you look at it, is that I need to cut the Campus content out of Episode 7. There is an issue with that scene that will take significant effort to resolve, and I don't want to hold everything up on it. That content will release with, or sometime prior to the Episode containing the Thursday Night strip club which is the next scene in the timeline. Currently that is scheduled no earlier than Episode 10.

I hope this helps to understand the current status a bit better.

My follow-up post:

Wolfschadowe's explanation above may confuse the heck out of some but it is helping me a lot. Just to add one point, I have referred several times to the one major scene left to do. You can see from his list that the scene, which I haven't named before, is "Wednesday Home." That is a really important scene and has some of the content most anticipated by fans. I have seen the outline and am very much looking forward to playing it.

Based on the new information, I will have to correct my guesses in the previous post. I now don't think we will get the beta before the end of September and the public release probably won't make it this month.

This is not good news but fits right in with the way Episode 7 has been proceeding - or not. It has been "snake-bit" from the start.

I know I speak for several when I say I will be very glad when we finally see E7 out and done.

[Guntag]

Predicting release dates is almost as fun as playing the game

[JFR]

Predicting release dates is almost as fun as playing the game

Tell me about it.

[Mahior]

I predict a December release.

Just in time for Christmas and stuff.

[Tao Dude]

I predict a December release.

Just in time for Christmas and stuff.

I'm going with Halloween, or thereabouts.

[darkefire]

How was this ever slated for a "before summer" release if there's still this much work needed in mid-September? I brought up Star Citizen earlier not just to poke a bit of fun but because BEW is also starting to get a serious stench of feature creep. Did we really need a dozen different women to juggle in a single game, rather than focus on three or four in a much tighter story? The more you broaden your scope, the more you allow players to see the gaps in a narrative.

[JFR]

How was this ever slated for a "before summer" release if there's still this much work needed in mid-September? I brought up Star Citizen earlier not just to poke a bit of fun but because BEW is also starting to get a serious stench of feature creep. Did we really need a dozen different women to juggle in a single game, rather than focus on three or four in a much tighter story? The more you broaden your scope, the more you allow players to see the gaps in a narrative.

As for the unreasonably early expectations for this release, Wolf had a staff of artists, writers and play testers who probably could have gotten the work done by late spring/early summer. Then he lost all but a few. This has been a recurring problem. Volunteers apply and start work but then find out just how much work is really involved in a project this big. Several of them worked for awhile and contributed to the game but then just disappeared into ether, never to be seen or heard from again. One of the hazards of depending on volunteers who work for a limited stipend and only identify with online handles.

The folks who remain are really dedicated and have been doing yeoman work but the fact is that 3 or 4 people just can't do the work of 10. That means the release date just has to keep slipping to allow time for the smaller team to get all the work done.

Regarding the addition of more love interests, that has been a debate since the beginning. I will admit to being on the side advocating to just stay with the original 5 potential romantic partners back when the question was put to the patrons. That was a minority opinion and the vote strongly supported going to the full 8 as proposed. It was also decided by vote to do ALL of the additions at once rather than trickle them in one at a time. The major deciding factor there was the possibility of losing all earlier save-games and having to deal with repeated disruptions to the release schedule instead of just one big disruption. The save-game problem was solved but the "one big disruption" turned into the current horrendously long delay in finishing the "inclusions issue." That is where we are with Episode 7. Once it is finally finished, the team can concentrate more on reasonably sized future episodes which will release much more often than this episode from hell. I think everyone realizes that our reach exceeded our grasp a bit on this one but you learn and grow and try not to make the same mistakes going forward.

This has all been just as frustrating for Wolfschadowe as for the loyal gamers who only want play the game. Everyone involved with the project feels badly about it but they are also dedicated to producing the best product they can. It really is getting close.

[Rexxx]

Adding all the love interest hit bad the game for the amount of work needed, but after this my I'm also more sure that if the extra women would have added at the end probably only one or two would have appeared.
Updating all the game from the beginning 3 times would have destroyed even iron willed people.