HEY, GUYS!

In the last devlog, I noted the possibility of not being able to work on Versotale for a while should the homework load remain large.

As you can see, that aforementioned scenario has transpired.

I just wanna take one moment to thank all of you for being so patient waiting on me! It's very much appreciated.

Rather than treating this unintended hiatus as a bad thing, I'd like to celebrate the semester nearly being over. I will soon be able to work on this project again with a clear head, uninhibited by worrying about the next several deadlines!

...Except for, of course, the timer counting down the days to the next semester, but that's a different bridge to cross for Future Me to worry about and to get mad at Past Me for not adequately preparing for crossing the aforementioned bridge!

WHAT I'VE BEEN UP TO

Of course, I haven't been spending my ENTIRE time on homework, projects, and such. But I've learned from experience that it takes me a couple days to a week just to get back into the flow of things, and I can assure you that it would not have played out well.

So, in the stints where I wasn't working on academics, one of my friends introduced me to this little unknown indie game you probably haven't heard of called Hollow Knight.

I may have developed a minor addiction to that game now.

This was surprising to me, as I have never played a metroidvania-style game before. Yet, in one fell swoop, I think it has become my favorite genre. What I also wasn't expecting was to find inspiration from elements of that game's storyline. Of course, I'm not going to tell y'all what those elements were. Point is, inspiration is high.

PLANS

The primary goal as of right now is to finish getting the battle recode into a presentable state. I have to admit that there's been a LOT of different ideas tossing around in this noggin of mine as to what the enemies for the battle should be. Should it be a non-canon goofy battle, with enemies you would NEVER encounter in the game? Should it have new/updated enemies in early unpolished states that are likely to be encountered in the game? It's a conundrum that I still don't think I have the actual answer to. So that's step one. Step two is actually the aforementioned task of making the battle presentable while still acknowledging that it is a work in progress.

Of course, then the next goal in mind is to get rough draft implementations for each planned room for the entirety of the Haven map. At the very least, the most important rooms that need to be visited in order to complete the area. After that, in no particular order, script implementation, puzzle implementation, random encounter implementation, scripted boss implementation, etc. etc.

So, still lots to do!

HOW AM I FEELING?

I'm not going to lie to you guys. There's part of me that's nervous about coming back after this long unintentional hiatus and basically having nothing from the interim to show off.

While I don't follow many other projects, I've seen some of my favorites absolutely killing it with high-quality and frequent progress! So, while I'm not asking for pity or anything, I feel it's pertinent to let you all know where my headspace is at while we dust off the cobwebs. That there IS a tad bit of pressure to measure up to the other big hitters out there. It's silly, honestly, as keeping up with the output quantity of other fan projects has NEVER been a concern of mine. But I'm certainly feeling a bit of a need to push on and get some stuff done. All that to say that I hope you bear with me as we start getting this show back on the road, alright?

All that being said... it's back to finishing up the recoded battle demo. Let's really see how intuitive I made this code for my future self to come back to and understand, eh? I guess we'll find out depending on how long the video takes!

Well, that should be everything for right now! Sorry there's nothing to show off right now. This should be rectified sooner rather than later, methinks. See y'all hopefully soon! Have a sparkular day, and I hope you enjoy the holiday season!