03/05/2019: Progress, changing it up a bit (Patreon)

Hey everyone,

I wanted to write something out to you to give some progress updates, couple of things I neglected to show you that I've made while streaming of late:

First off is a little robot scanner who, as they are here, will be attempting to detain and bring order to the various areas of the metropolis, armed with a mean grabby thing and a couple of tazer arms, plus a tank of security foam to detain large crowds if necessary.

There will also be a version of this the group known as Janus will have co-opted to suit their own ends, using the stolen tech for much more nefarious means!

The next is an infected Psi naga lady! (name in progress) 

I had to give her a little top for the purposes of keeping it all clean here, but you can imagine the level of outfit tearing that has been achieved ^^ she is a QRD trooper, a division of rapid deployment riot control police using experimental thought-controlling technologies sent out to help quell the riot. Well, that didn't go too well and now several of these beautiful sneks have ended up in the sewers, splashing around in the now even-more-glowing water and filling their target's mind with unspeakable thoughts reflective of their own! Aside from that she also has a stun rod. The fans on which retract inward into a surprisingly smooth, truncheon like cap to her tail. Make of that what you will ^^

 This was done on-stream a couple of days ago and is the kind of thing I want to try and do when I stream; there'll be other things of course, unsafe for employment things, but I figure making new things in the stream is a more interesting thing on the whole than working on frames 152-153; depending on what's happening in those frames I suppose ;) 

So I've been trying to do a few things like this to diversify stuff lately and get me out of my habits of grinding away at the animations, because I'll be honest it can get tedious when you're pretty deep into it but when you dictate your own hours and you're doggedly thinking 'I get THIS done, and THEN I can focus on THIS' etc etc. it gets to where you need to take a step back and re-evaluate; well I didn't do that, and it's taken the advice and support of my friends in the discord server to make me realise 'oh, I actually could just do something else and it would actually be way cooler', so now I've worried you all with that last line and the title I'd like to announce that I'm going to be switching over to coding for a while ^^

Sod the animating currently, it's been my focus to have all the enemies have complete adult animations and THEN continue with the level design, deluding myself into thinking I can just grind through and my productivity won't suffer; it's a pitfall I've had to be pulled out of before by people who care about my well-being and I'd do well to recognize when I'm just running on fumes in one particular department and could do with a pitstop.

But that's the nice thing about this being all I do, I need something to occupy my days and I've ground out enough frames of late that I'd really like to immerse myself in something completely different; and coding is definitely one of those things that once I get used to it I've found nothing but exhilarating!

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So in summary, no I'm not quitting or taking a hiatus or anything like that; in fact I believe this move will provide a nice rest from the grind and give me a challenge I know I can do that will also result in more actual game updates!

Some of the things I want to focus on trying out first are:

- Adding the text boxes/system back in and the cutscene bits along with it

- Looking at the old lighting system and trying to replicate it

- Bug Fixing!

- Refining the movement and all of that until it feels juuuuust right, then probably change it endlessly

- Menu systems / game settings both audio and visual

- Adding to / completing the level

- Adding a cutscene or two

I realize that's quite a few things to start out with, but I can look back here for reference on what I want to tackle next so may as well right? Getting the text back in place so I can give some context to the world and some sense of plot would be the biggest thing for the moment, though luckily I can be familiarizing myself with stuff by going through the code I'd used in 0.5 for the text and trying to replicate it over; good thing to start tomorrow I think.

So yes, I am sorry everyone for not putting my focus back into the game creation side of it like I really should have after the christmas release; I won't let myself get discouraged about it though, I'm going in the right direction now for the most part and I aim to show you the fruits of my efforts as soon as I can with a new demo link ^^

Thanks for reading everyone, I look forward to being able to come to you with more than a couple pictures next time!