Update (22-Jul-2022)

Hi All,

Just wanted to give a quick update. All things seem to be going well. I think I've pretty much done everything I wanted for the next release. Next week, I will be testing the build, and if all goes well, I'll release version 0.5 next weekend. Here are the planned changes:

1. Added a new Doll. Currently, it only has 1 view, but we will add 2 more over time. Also, the "Flip" button is now relabeled as "Switch". In addition to changing between different views, it will also show the main character with and without her outer layer of clothing.
2. Rewrote the Cargo bay scenes and included 2 new silhouettes. Please let me know what you think of this writing style!
3. Added a confirmation check, when ending the early by having enough credits to pay off the debt. Now if you click on the button by accident, you can still go back by saying 'no'.
4. Rebalanced the harassment chance, such that officer personalities don't impact it as much (down from 3% base to 2% base).
5. Updated some obligation text, to reflect the new doll art.
6. Updated some morning scene text too, to generally make them less dark.

Unity

There's another thing I really wanted to talk about. You may have heard about Unity on the news, recently. Unity is the game engine with which I'm making Delivery Pilot. The summary of what happened is that the company that makes Unity fired about 4% of its staff, its CEO (who is also a former EA CEO) said some pretty hurtful things, and also, Unity is merging with a company called IronSource, which has a pretty shady past.

When I first heard the news, I was pretty alarmed. I'm still not super happy about it. but after watching some summaries about it, I'm not so alarmed, anymore. My first and biggest worry was, "will Unity inject malware or ads into my games?" This is because articles have said that IronSource had made applications that were blacklisted by Windows Defender and other antivirus software. I was even thinking about maybe switching to Godot, an alternative game engine, to make games.

But, I'm not too worried, anymore. Firstly, IronSource made the SDK (Software Development Kit) that other parties have used to bundle malware into installers for more benign software. For example, someone might give you an installer for Google Chrome, but also bundle in an ad bar inside the installer. But, I don't think IronSource itself did this malicious activity, and I think they discontinued the SDK around 2020. The other reason I'm not as worried about IronSource is because it's now a publicly traded company, worth I think billions. They're not going to be doing that dodgy stuff anymore, at least not any more than other typical publicly traded companies. They focus on targeted ads on mobile apps. They're not going to endanger that cash cow. Since I don't make mobile games and I don't want to monetize my games (they're just hobby projects), I don't think this stuff really applies to my games. There are a ton of features in Unity that I don't use, and this will just become one of them.

That being said, let's all keep an eye on how things go. If you would like a better explanation of the situation, I recommend watching Code Monkey's summary on it: 

Cheers!