This may be one of my last progress updates posted here on Discord. To improve the chances of GoZen being discovered by people, I’d like to start posting these progress reports in a blog instead. This blog will be posted on a personal site of mine where I’ll put all progress reports about all software games I work on.
I’ll continue to post the links here so people can comment on the reports here, as I have comments disabled on my site because 99% of comments on WordPress sites are spam anyway and I don’t feel like adding site comment moderation to my already too busy to-do list. :p
Websites are time consuming
At this moment I am using WordPress, everything is mostly set-up and I will only spend a minimum amount of work in maintaining this site. In the future I’d like to use Hugo as I already have experience with it and know how it works. Since I already have a basic WordPress site up and running with a host, it would be dumb to spend my time converting everything to a Hugo based system (something for next year, 2024, as I would prefer something less clogged up for my website content management system).
Busy busy
I’m running behind my video schedule for my other channels, VL and VS, whilst working on GoZen and the videos for VGJ. Holiday season is also around the corner and I am starting to question if I can stick to my schedule around this period. December has been a month with lots of mountains (ups and downs), but I’m getting through it.
Improving myself
On a more personal note, to increase the amount of work I get done I decided upon a few changes in my life.
I stopped watching YouTube; (I mainly watch in evenings when I am too tired/exhausted to work. Instead I’ll be heading to bed earlier or try to find something to do to make progress)
Exercising has also been picked up again; (I noticed that not doing my exercising anymore for the past months was starting to have negative impacts on my overall energy levels)
No more working on YT, GoZen, and other work during 7 am and 1 pm; (This time will be fully dedicated to doing my stay-at-home-dad work such as cleaning, cooking, spending time with kid/family)
Wake up earlier; (To get more work done whilst my kid/family isn’t awake yet)
GoZen is coming along nicely
Although I haven’t been able to get the amount of work done as I wanted to, all pieces are slowly starting to fall together. I have not been doing any planning on GoZen anymore and just been following my simple schedule I set out for myself. Probably one of the best things I have done was set simple goals, give myself enough time and stop changing the schedule every couple of days. ^^”
Settings menu and Project settings menu are coming along nicely, but to meet the deadline I will only implement the setting fields (string, int, bool) and implement others later as becomes needed. More of an explanation on this in a later video as this settings menu became a complex system somehow hahaha.
Having it as a separate project is helpful, but also introduces some challenges. If I manage to do the live-stream today in which I’ll work on the settings menu I may give more of a detailed view on how this system is supposed to work. :p
Live-streaming development
I intend to do more live-streaming next month whilst doing GoZen development, not certain if there is an interest in that or not. I first thought of doing a monthly live-stream, but having some random ones thrown in each month seem like a fun idea to get more content out as I don’t think I can always create a weekly video.
I started with the FFmpeg GDExtension series and although views and likes are lower than usual, it is still doing well and the people who watch watch for a good amount, so good for gaining more watch time which is needed as we only have a total of 900 hours in total so far. ^^”
Conclusion
I am feeling productive … and in pain from starting to exercise again after 2-3 months of not doing it. ^^”
Slowly but surely I am figuring work routines out, getting work done, and generating an income. In 2 weeks 2024 arrives … the year of the deadline. I try not to think too much about it because worrying about it won’t help me in the slightest, 2024 is the year I’ll limit free time for myself big time, turning myself into a work-a-holic.
GoZen needs it’s first version released next year, want to get all my YouTube channels monetized, and want to have a proper income stream. I’ll also be working more on my health.
I’m getting myself ready for 2024 and looking forward to how GoZen will turn out, I’m still as motivated (if not more motivated) since the day I started working on GoZen. Seeing all pieces fall together is a very nice feeling and progress is slowly starting to show. ^^
Planned modules
These are the planned official modules we have planned so far on making:
- Subtitles;
- YouTube Audio Library;
- Direct render to YouTube;
- Chapter system; (basic version for YouTube videos)
- Titles; (on-screen titles, thinking of doing this as a sub-module as some video makers don’t require this)
Small update
Settings menu is completed, only working out a few bugs which I’ll do over the past couple of days, so in the road-map it will stay as “in progress” for now. Next part is the media pool which will require some changes to the GoZen extension as file types will become a part of it for performance related reasons. After that I’ll be working on the timeline.
Starting then, GoZen will become actually use-able to create videos. I know that it is quite early to be gathering alpha testers, but the more testers we have, the quicker I can deliver a stable beta version. Everybody who wants to be alpha testing can apply with the link below.
The reason why I’m doing alpha testing this way is to have more control of the process. I don’t call it a closed-alpha as everybody is free to apply and I will allow anybody to join as long as the reason they applied is not: “For fun”. There is a disclaimer of how data will be handled for the people worried about that, if you would prefer not to fill in the form because of not trusting google, contact me through Discord directly with the answers to the questions in the form.
First beta test will be completely open without people needing to fill in a form. Alpha is really meant to make certain crashes and terrible bugs won’t/can’t happen. https://forms.gle/aRWLXo1M883V8pDJ9
