Hi!

This is just a polished version of my game, now that the Game Jam is over and I'm finally allowed to fix typos, small coding errors, the bad audio mixing, etc.

Hopefully those issues are solved! Even though I am very proud of my story, these past few weeks I couldn't help but cringe at the thought that what I had put out was riddled with typos. Such is the nature of a game jam!

As far as coding errors go, thankfully none were gamebreaking, but there were a few uninteded effects. The most hilarious one is that one scene where Cody seemingly takes off his shirt in the middle of a conversation: miraculously it ended up sort of working in context, even though in reality it was just me forgetting I had to recall the shirt layer of his sprite after I had made Cody disappear for a few blocks of text!

MY EXPERIENCE WITH THE GAME JAM

Now that it's over, I can say I'm incredibly happy of this experience. This was not a foregone conclusion: during the making of The Flying General the prevailing feeling (other than stress) was depression. 

I was on the verge of giving up more times than I can recount. The task of completing this VN in time felt more distant and impossible rather closer with each passing day. I feel so grateful that Hugh chose to grace me with a few free CGs, not only because those definitely ended up greatly enhancing the final product, but also because if I hadn't had a teammate, I can't rule out that I'd given up before the deadline. Having someone else who was working on this project along with me meant that failure to deliver was no longer an option. I owed it to him to deliver a finished product, even if it wasn't perfect.

In the end, I finished coding so close to the deadline that I never had the chance to play my own game from start to finish before uploading it to the Internet for others to play. It was truly a magical experience playing my own game for the first time. Not only was I happier with the final result than I had anticipated, but this strange creature, that I was no longer allowed to touch during the long weeks of voting, no longer felt like something I could possibly have made. I could see a piece of myself in it, but at the same time it felt like something only a Loudo from some other alternate reality could have possibly have written, something I intimately knew, but no longer owned.

... But enough with the esoteric, back to the jam.

I'm elated The Flying General has had the positive reception it's had, even going as far as ranking #2 for best Story. As someone who considers himself mainly a writer, who at best dabbles in the other aspects of making a Visual Novel, that was the highest reward I could have asked for. But above all else, even more than the flattering but still cold numbers, the most magical experience for me has been getting to see people engage with the story, find their own meaning in it, wanting more from this setting and these characters than I had given them, and all the other feedback I've received in these past few weeks.

I sincerely thank everyone who left their comments and who will leave their comments in the future. I will not always engage with them, because as an author I believe it is my duty at this point to make myself scarse and let my creation stand on its legs, speak its own language. But know that I've read them and I will read them avidly.

WHAT'S NEXT

What's next? Even though I was flattered by some people saying they wanted to know more about the characters and the world, or that they would like the story to continue, I will state categorically that this story is complete. Even though I am quite fond of this setting, at the end of the day the worldbuilding was in service of telling a story, and I feel like there's nothing I could add to the story that wouldn't be superflous at best, or harmful at worst.

While I was working on this polished version, I did consider whether I wanted to expand some parts that mostly ended up as short as they were because of time constraints. The two big things were I was tempted to make some additions were:

- A scene where we actually get to see Unagi interact with Theo and Manny in their cabin. When I wrote the original script, this was a part I had considered expanding on later if I had time before the deadline.

- Some better set-up for the Seeker's Curse. With so much to set up in such a short amount of time, this was the one aspect that slipped a bit through my fingers. At the same time, despite the esoteric name, I felt like this was such a grounded concept that it didn't really need much introduction.

Like I said before though, I felt like I didn't own the story anymore. After having seen it spread its wings and prove its ability to fly, any substantial change to it felt like violence to me.

However, I am happy to report that I'm already working on my next project (in fact, I was working on it before this jam was even announced!). And while now I already worry that my next one will not live up to the standard I've set myself with The Flying General, I hope you will stick around and find out for yourself if that's the case when it comes out!

For now, thank you for reading! And special thanks in particular to:

- Hugh, for sharing this journey with me

- Unagi and Codi, to have made this whole experience possible

- Mae and Purkka, to have done what I was too afraid and proud to do myself, and encourage other people to read my story

- Akiba, for his help in optimizing a few things for this polished version.

A presto!