I apologize that I’m a few days late with this update. I’ve been on a family vacation for the past week so needless to say its been a little less productive than usual. Of course, this means I lost a week this month so I haven’t gotten around to as much as I’d like, but still, as usual, progress was made.

As I’ve said in the past this patch is likely close, but its pretty dependent on my artist still. What is basically happening is that what is specified on the roadmap, listed below, is essentially done.

-Compendium -4 Zones -2 NPCs

To clarify that, the compendium is done. The NPCs are in along with their quests. The zones are mostly done, just waiting on assets for basically 1 zone. The assets needed just happen to be large so they are taking longer. I’m specifying all this because I am admittedly making this take a bit longer than it should.

To explain that, I keep doing things that weren’t planned for this patch. As I said when I made the roadmap, it’s a rough outline. Two examples of this in this patch is that there is now a mail system implemented into the game. Don’t expect to get many letters yet, but since I made the system I needed art, and as a consequence slowed down other assets.

The other example of something that wasn’t supposed to happen this patch is that there is another NPC on top of the 2 that were designated for this patch. This NPC isn’t really like the others, but I’ll leave that a bit of a mystery. In regards to art, this meant making a new NPC, a few animations, and a dialogue portrait so it also slowed stuff down.

While the art is what’s slowing down the patch there is also another major component to this character. I wasn’t really planning to do this, but it didn’t make much sense to have her in the game and not include this. Without spoiling much, this character will already have her story dialogue built in. More might be added later, but she’s essentially a test run for what the NPC dialogue system will be. According to the roadmap those dialogues are supposed to be added basically last, but I wanted to test it all and see what people think in case I need to make changes. This of course means I need to develop the dialogue system but it should be pretty easy.

Aside from those things, this month saw a few other minor changes that I won’t go into detail about. I also spent some time trying to track down a particular bug related to a white pattern overlay appearing on screen. Still haven’t managed that one yet, but I should have a lead now at least.

There isn’t much else to mention I think, just working as usual. It isn’t exactly relevant at the moment, but I did do some thinking while on vacation and made some final adjustments to the combat system. Its changed a few times at this point, but I think I’m happy with it.

The goal, as I’ve probably said before, is to make the system a bit more involved than just a normal turn-based battle system where you hit them and they hit you, repeat, repeat. We’ll see if what I’ve thought up is any better I suppose. When the time comes, I think I will create a mock up of it for public consumption to get some opinions just because, while I think its cool, it isn’t good to develop in a bubble, especially when it is something this huge.

In any case, thank you all for your patience, I’ll certainly be back with another update at the end of this month. No vacation either, so I should be on time too. Hope you all have fun playing in the meantime.