Cultcow EvaXephon / Yanderedev / Alex Mahan / Alexander Stuart Mahan / cannotgoogleme - Edgy weeaboo coomer with pedo tendencies and 15+ years internet history as a lolcow, now known as a disaster developer behind eternal debug build called "Yandere Simulator", confirmed groomer and dollfucker

[McSneaks]

Hard drives die after a few years

....no?


Lmao at one backup the day before otherwise he would have lost his entire life. That would have been incredible

 

[BScCollateral]

....no?


Lmao at one backup the day before otherwise he would have lost his entire life. That would have been incredible

A reminder to all those playing at home:
A USB powered 5TB portable hard drive costs about one hundred bucks. Get two; one attached to your computer and one in a fireproof safe. Swap them every month.

 

[Catgirls are Love]

I seriously hope that he has a git repo in the cloud, not just on his computer.

He has one but no idea if he's still using it. It was one of the things that was accessed during the email/Reddit breach and let us see the state of his code so that may have scared him off using it.

Another possibility is that Alex may be exaggerating the hard drive failure and the potential loss he avoided. Just because it's something potentially bad that he miraculously avoided and we find amusing doesn't necessarily mean it's truthful; may just be another "oh, woe is me, give me your sympathy (and money)" moment. I've had a hard drive failure within the last few years that I managed to recover 99.9% of the files on the drive with a SATA to USB cable with nothing of value lost. No idea if this is what happened to Alex and he's exaggerating for attention, but I feel someone should at least mention this possibility as Alex isn't exactly a trustworthy source.

 

[lumaleelumabop]

January 15 bug fixing build (archive)

Hello!

All of the 202X tutorials are complete, and all of the voice acting has been recorded! But, before I can fully release the tutorial, I need to:

1. Review the voice acting and request any changes if necessary
2. Put the voice acting into the game
3. Implement the tutorial cutscene
4. Adjust the game’s opening sequence so that the game transitions from Intro Cutscene > Tutorial Cutscene > Tutorial > Info-chan Cutscene > Calendar
5. Do final testing, confirm that it’s possible to repeat tutorials any number of times and do tutorials in any order without anything breaking.

The animations for the tutorial cutscene aren’t finished yet. If they’re not finished by Feb 1st, I guess I’ll just implement a simple “characters pop between static poses and don’t actually move” cutscene, like the original “Senpai meets Amai” cutscene, and use that as a placeholder until proper animations can be created.

Over the past 2 weeks, a lot of valid suggestions/requests were made and a lot of bugs were reported, so a lot of improvements and fixes were made to the game. To see a list, scroll down past this adorable artwork by Emmaria!

Changes and Improvements

• If you splash Osana with liquid during her sunbathing event, before she reaches the locker room, there is no reason for her to cancel the event, since she was already planning to go to the locker room to change clothes, anyway. So, from now on, splashing her before she changes into her swimsuit will no longer change her plans to do her Thursday event.
• Updated the eye textures for a lot of characters who were using the default store-bought “Aoi” eye texture, instead of unique eye textures. (Some of these might get updated again in the future, since pupils are supposed to be black and are not supposed to be too close in color to irises.)
• Earth’s real-life moon will be in the “Waxing Gibbous” phase during the first week of April in 2025, so the moon that appears onscreen during Osana’s stalker stealth mission has been changed to be a Waxing Gibbous moon.
• Previously, attempting to change Senpai’s hair color at the Senpai customization screen would combine two colors, preventing the player from achieving the color they actually wanted. This problem has been fixed.
• Prisoners in your basement will now have their health deteriorate faster if there are corpses the basement with them. The rate of their health deterioration will increase with the number of corpses present.
• Because there are no collectible cassette tapes to listen to in 1980s Mode (kind of ironic, huh?) I’ve disabled the tape player in the school scene when you’re in 1980s Mode.
• From now on, when you are playing the game on 1/8 resolution textures, the button prompts that appear during the delinquent combat minigame should be more legible.
• It would be weird if the magazines in the teahouse didn’t change over the course of 36 years, so the magazines in the teahouse are now different in 1980s Mode.
• When viewing a student’s “Reputation Chart” in 1980s Mode, the art style of the chart now matches the VCR aesthetic of 1980s Mode.
• Students now perform a “looking left and right curiously” animation when they are investigating a suspicious noise.
• Increasing your Biology stat will now cause corpses to spill fewer blood pools upon death.
• Updated the eye textures for all 1980s Mode rival girls.
• Updated Kuu Dere’s hair texture.
• Updated Pippi’s hair model.

Fixes

• If the player put a corpse into a garbage bag, put it into the incinerator, did NOT activate the incinerator, and performed the delinquent beat-em-up minigame, the corpse would appear outside of the incinerator, standing up. This bug has been fixed.
• If a memorial for a deceased student was held at school on a day when Senpai was staying home from school, Senpai’s “aura” would be present in the school gym in the spot that he would normally be standing in. This bug has been fixed.
• Fixed bug that would cause Osana to change her clothing to an outfit she shouldn’t be able to wear on Wednesday if the player stole her phone, put it on her desk, and advanced to lunchtime before Osana found her phone on her desk.
• Fixed bug that would prevent the game from accurately remembering how many photographs of Senpai were in the player’s possession if the player used a Senpai photo to restore sanity and then got a game over and reset the day.
• Fixed bug that would cause the player to spin in circles during the “push student off of rooftop” animation if the player activated the animation while the student was reacting to a camera pointed at them.
• Fixed bug that would cause faculty members to subtract from your reputation if you pointed a camera at them for too long. (Faculty members shouldn’t do this, because they don’t gossip, like students do.)
• Fixed bug that would cause Osana to teleport out of her classroom on Wednesday if the player stole her phone, put it on her desk, and advanced to lunchtime before Osana found her phone on her desk.
• If the player saved and loaded the game after poisoning Osana, Osana would forget that she was supposed to be poisoned, and would restart an event from earlier in the day. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player attended class while a teacher was holding a weapon and bringing it to the faculty room, the teacher would still be holding the weapon after teaching class. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player saved the game while wearing a blood-stained painter’s smock and then loaded the save, the protagonist would be wearing a towel when the save was loaded. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player saved the game with a weapon in their inventory, and then loaded the save, the protagonist would automatically equip the weapon upon loading the save. This bug has been fixed.
• Fixed bug that would prevent a teacher from responding properly to the player if the player attempted to report blood/corpses to a teacher while another student was doing the same thing.
• Fixed bug that would cause Senpai and Osana to appear as blue and pink silhouettes if the player had the “low-detail students” graphical setting enabled from the start of the school day.
• Fixed bug would cause Raibaru to forget about being electrocuted and spy on Osana if Osana’s Monday phone event activated while Raibaru was in the process of being electrocuted.
• Fixed bug that would cause Sonoko to enter the “reacting to Ryoba running nearby” state while she was meant to be running to a meeting location to have a meeting with someone.
• There was a bug that would cause the “Tripwire Checklist” to appear onscreen even if there was a wall between the player and the water cooler. This bug has been fixed.
• Fixed bug that would cause a corpse to teleport a few meters to the side if it was dropped in a very specific spot in the girls’ shower building.
• Fixed bug that would cause Kyuji to slide across the ground if the player distracted him with a giggle while he was on his way to gaze at Osana.
• Security cameras will no longer consider you “suspicious” when you’re splattered with blood if you’re wearing a painter’s smock at the time.
• Fixed bug that prevented the game from updating the text on the Stats screen to say “Newspaper” when the player joined the Newspaper Club.
• Fixed bug that would let the player clip into characters by aiming their smartphone camera at a character while walking towards them.
• Fixed bug that would cause the game to incorrectly count the amount of bloody clothing at school if a painter’s smock became bloody.
• Fixed bug that prevented the Stats screen from displaying the player’s club if the player checked the Stats screen while at home.
• Fixed bug that would cause a 1980s bookbag to appear at Osana’s desk if the player performed the delinquent beat-em-up minigame.
• Fixed bug that would prevent Chigusa from using the “cuddle with boyfriend” routine if she was eliminated through matchmaking.
• Reverted rendering change, since it caused the ends of hallways to flicker when viewed from the opposite end of the hallways.
• Fixed bug that allowed the player to save up to 26 photographs, even though the Photo Gallery can only hold 25 photographs.
• Fixed bug that was preventing the player from suffering a reputation penalty after being caught lockpicking or stealing.
• Fixed bug that allowed the player to interact with things while the game was paused during the asylum stealth mission.
• Fixed bug that would cause characters to ignore misbehavior for the rest of the day after being hit by a stink bomb.
• Fixed bug that would cause the 1980s Mode confession music to play in 202X when a suitor confessed to a rival.
• Fixed rendering bug that prevented the game’s mirrors from properly rendering the environment nearby them.
• Fixed bug that allowed the player to use the cinematic camera without enabling Debug commands.
• Fixed skinning/clipping issues with the long skirts of the female delinquents in 1980s Mode.
• Fixed bug that would screw up Raibaru’s pathfinding if the player spoke to Osana.
• Fixed a typo in one of Teiko’s subtitles.

That’s It?

I feel like I had tremendous momentum in the 2nd half of 2022, but I feel like my momentum really slowed down in late December and early January. I feel really guilty about that. In fact, I feel so bad about my lack of progress lately that I “banned” myself from streaming video games on my Twitch stream until I feel that I’ve returned to my previous levels of productivity.

It’s easy to see where the time went in early January, though:

• I wrote the 2022 Transparency Report
• I wrote the 4,533-word-long “Everything I Plan To Do Before The Crowdfunding Campaign” post
• I wrote a massive post describing the traits that the upcoming character models will have
• I wrote a giant Foreign Fan Appreciation Post that took a pretty long time to prepare
• I shared upcoming content on my Patreon page

All of these things took a lot of time away from development, but are things I really wanted to take care of at the beginning of the year.

In addition to that stuff, there were also a couple of other things that took my time, focus, and attention away from the game over the past 2 weeks…

• Two of my hard drives died, and I had to restore from recent backups
• My roof developed a leak, allowing rainwater to damage part of my ceiling, and both the roof and ceiling had to be repaired

Both issues have been taken care of, but man, those sorts of thing are like black holes that just suck up your time. There was also some other stuff that robbed me of a lot of time in early January, but I’m not going to bother trauma-dumping a bunch of stuff you don’t care about here in this blog post.

Now that all of those blog posts are finished and those hard drive / roof problems have been resolved, I can hopefully return 100% of my focus to game development and make some awesome kickass progress over the next 2 weeks! I anticipate that the tutorial will be totally complete (except for cutscene) by Feb 1st, unless more unexpected problems pop up and steal my focus away from the game.

Now, I acknowledge that this is going to be a really weird thing to say immediately after saying, “I banned myself from streaming games, and I’m going to focus 100% of my attention on game development now!” but…

Steam Anniversary

On January 17th, 2009, I streamed a video game for the first time. It completely changed my life; once I experienced the thrill of playing video games while interacting with an audience, I didn’t want to do anything else! For a period of several years, I streamed every day, usually for 12 hours straight!

In commemoration of that life-changing day, I have an annual tradition: every year, during the month of January, I take two days off from work to celebrate the anniversary of my first video game stream by replaying the first two games I ever streamed. On January 17th, I play Resident Evil 4, and on January 19th, I play Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon.

Even though I’ve “banned” myself from streaming for a while, I refuse to give up my yearly anniversary streams; that tradition is just too important to me. So, on Jan 17th and Jan 19th, you’ll be able to find me streaming RE4 and Goemon on my Twitch channel.

If you’d like to join me, you can find me at twitch.tv/yanderedev. I plan to start at 12:00 noon in the PST timezone, but the stream might start later than that.

Even if you only pop in for a few minutes just to say hello, I would be very happy to see you there!

 

[Glowie]

It took that long to make tutorials?
Are his paypigs capable of shame?

 

[R00T]

Earth’s real-life moon will be in the “Waxing Gibbous” phase during the first week of April in 2025, so the moon that appears onscreen during Osana’s stalker stealth mission has been changed to be a Waxing Gibbous moon

Doesn’t this defeat the point of calling it 202X, or is it just a subtle hint that Alex is planning two more years of development?

 

[Neurotypical Mantis]

Doesn’t this defeat the point of calling it 202X, or is it just a subtle hint that Alex is planning two more years of development?

this is why he's taking so long

 

[Juan But Not Forgotten]

Doesn’t this defeat the point of calling it 202X, or is it just a subtle hint that Alex is planning two more years of development?

Holy shit, this is like 5th time he does that, because otherwise completely finished game will be worthless, obviously.

 

[Lerias]

Attention to detail is good.

But this type of needless TMI-level attention to detail on stuff nobody would even care about in a video game is not good.

 

[Schwarzwald]

Attention to detail is good.

But this type of needless TMI-level attention to detail on stuff nobody would even care about in a video game is not good.

I think he does it as busywork to make it seem to his fans (and himself) that he's being productive. The end result is a lengthy, ultimately inconsequential laundry list of minutiae, but at least he has something to show for his time. "See, I'm making it perfect with super strong attention to detail!"

I think subconsciously he doesn't want to finish the game at this point. No matter what, the end result isn't going to justify a decade of work and he knows that. It's not going to live up to fan expectations or his own, and he knows the gravy train is going to end and he'll be forgotten or a laughingstock. He has no idea what's next in life and it scares the hell out of him, so he's dragging his feet as much as possible to the finish line.

I think the only thing that might save him at this point would be another idea for a project that he and his fans gets excited about, but even then he knows if YS bombs at launch that's going to hamstring any future efforts. I think there's also an element of knowing that the vast majority of YS was getting people excited about the interesting concept and catching lightning in a bottle, rather than anything especially brilliant about him as a designer or programmer.

 

[Diesel Boogaloo]

Doesn’t this defeat the point of calling it 202X, or is it just a subtle hint that Alex is planning two more years of development?

He'll change it again.
The game is always set in either the current year, or the next year. I think it's because he wants his Easter eggs to not be anachronistic.
The problem this obviously causes is that the 80s mode will soon no longer be able to be an 80s mode without making Ryoba Ayano's grandmother. Assuming very optimistically that 2025 is the intended setting, and given that the 80s mode is set in 1989, then Ryoba gave birth to Ayano at the age of 36.
Alex gotta hurry to finish the game before menopause.

 

[AbduluCthuluZulu]

He'll change it again.
The game is always set in either the current year, or the next year. I think it's because he wants his Easter eggs to not be anachronistic.
The problem this obviously causes is that the 80s mode will soon no longer be able to be an 80s mode without making Ryoba Ayano's grandmother. Assuming very optimistically that 2025 is the intended setting, and given that the 80s mode is set in 1989, then Ryoba gave birth to Ayano at the age of 36.
Alex gotta hurry to finish the game before menopause.

Didn't Alex at one point say that Aishi women always give birth at a young age too? The lore has just as much spaghetti as the code at this point.

 

[Kuritan Deplorable]

"See, I'm making it perfect with super strong attention to detail!"

You're entirely right about why he's doing it, but this bothers me greatly because its a terrible way to write any game.

Players like mystery, they like thinking things through and discovering them, there's good reason why lore videos are a huge subset of youtube content lately. When you make everything so clearly defined that its easily wiki paged, its boring for everyone involved, leaves little to actually be discussed, and only really opens you up to conflict when you get a detail wrong that derails all the others, negating the whole space worth of effort.

A good writer knows what not to write about, and game narrative is particularly focused on "just leave it, maybe they'll figure it out themselves". You can do the moon thing, but don't explain it. Add bits that support whatever your larger known story arc is, but only explain the relevant bits. Leave the rest to player discovery and intrigue, its not worth your effort and some of them will enjoy the process.

 

[Humbert Humbert]

Didn't Alex at one point say that Aishi women always give birth at a young age too? The lore has just as much spaghetti as the code at this point.

yes but there’s yet again another lore reason why she waited so long.

 

[Adamska]

He'll change it again.
The game is always set in either the current year, or the next year. I think it's because he wants his Easter eggs to not be anachronistic.
The problem this obviously causes is that the 80s mode will soon no longer be able to be an 80s mode without making Ryoba Ayano's grandmother. Assuming very optimistically that 2025 is the intended setting, and given that the 80s mode is set in 1989, then Ryoba gave birth to Ayano at the age of 36.
Alex gotta hurry to finish the game before menopause.

He's hoping for that so he can pretend reworking it to be 90s mode is progress.

 

[Juan But Not Forgotten]

Didn't Alex at one point say that Aishi women always give birth at a young age too? The lore has just as much spaghetti as the code at this point.

Heh, remember when Akademi was an elite high school for actual children?

Alex gotta hurry to finish the game before menopause.

Well, japanese women are supposed to age slower, so he's got plenty of time.

He's hoping for that so he can pretend reworking it to be 90s mode is progress.

At this rate he will just make it "a LARP camp for something 30-y.o. who missed the 80s and want to relieve that experience."

A good writer knows what not to write about, and game narrative is particularly focused on "just leave it, maybe they'll figure it out themselves". You can do the moon thing, but don't explain it. Add bits that support whatever your larger known story arc is, but only explain the relevant bits. Leave the rest to player discovery and intrigue, its not worth your effort and some of them will enjoy the process.

Has Alex played Souls games? On the one hand it's a good example of telling your story through the world-building without just spelling out what is happening, but on the other the fucker would probably waste another couple of years coming up with convoluted bullshit for every object in the game.

 

[Activelo]

Alex detects a loaded question.

 

[Humbert Humbert]

Alex detects a loaded question.
View attachment 4289452

I’m going to go with “no, he doesn’t” (unless it’s for his viewing pleasure).

 

[Gargoyle]

Alex detects a loaded question.
View attachment 4289452

I can't look for the direct quote right now but back when he was still posting on 4chan and someone asked him about lgbt stuff in the game he said something like "this is a game from a 4channer to 4channers and it won't have any social justice bullshit". By now he has of course backpedaled on this since his audience has changed.

IIRC there isn't a single gay boy in yansim. Every "lgbt character" is a lesbian, which is fine by him because he slurps to yuri and the game is basically his fanfiction fantasy. But gays are disgusting, so he won't include them.

The fact that instead of just saying "lol of course I support lgbt" he dodges the question entirely just proves that his real answer probably isn't a "yes". He's an edgy boi trapped by an audience of lefty mental invalids he has to cater to. If he was still in 4chan's good graces there would probably be actual rape in the game by now.

 

[Juan But Not Forgotten]

I can't look for the direct quote right now but back when he was still posting on 4chan and someone asked him about lgbt stuff in the game he said something like "this is a game from a 4channer to 4channers and it won't have any social justice bullshit". By now he has of course backpedaled on this since his audience has changed.

Actually, he opposed that at first, but after 4channers pressured him enough, he added female senpai to the list of features that will never be for the reason of "stalking boy feels kinda gay", which is exactly what 4channers complained about.