happy april, everybody. it's been a little bit since the last devlog and i figured, for the sake of transparency, i should say something along the lines of "hi, i still exist, everything is okay :)". i think for that reason i may or may not start having a little monthly, maybe bi-monthly, kind of casual chat devlog. yknow, just me briefly going into what's been happening lately and why there's no update yet. no fancy formatting or capitalization, just a dude basically making some kind of blog about what he's been up to.

i admit that that sounds a little silly conceptually. i mean, you're here for the game, not for me, but after kinda vanishing for a whole year without a trace i just wanna make sure to keep signs of life going that show "hi, yes, i exist, i am here, i didnt stop caring about mto". yknow, so people dont have to think "goddamnit, did he disappear again?"

so, work on mto. what's been going on? well, lately ive found myself in a situation where, because i barely did any work during 2022 i feel incredibly anxious when i dont do "enough" productive stuff throughout the day.. which then ironically makes me not want to work on anything.. which means i'm not doing anything productive and makes me even more anxious. and even when i do manage to do some work, its not always on mto. that said, progress is being made, even if its slow. it's just that i work off bullet points, a lot of which aren't really worth their own devlogs or a lot i can't even screenshot. like, do you really want to see a dev log about one of jotaro's attacks now leaving a trail and me removing the hitbox that i accidentally gave the trail? is me changing internal file names worth a devlog? no, i dont really think so

the way i currently work on mto is that i set a to-do list for myself for the next BETA build of the update. this to-do list usually has fixes for bugs found in the prior build, points for assets that were only finished after the last build (i.e. something like a character portrait), ideas that were brought up since the last build (like a new pvp soul rendering system that accounts for ping) and stuff that's on my general to-do list for the update (like the return of sans' and flowey's ability to change their voice/font for chat, this time via modifiers in the ALT menu). then i work off these bullet points one by one, i drop a build for my testers, we test around, then i make a new to-do list until every bug is fixed and every bullet point from my overall update to-do list is worked off.

i may have made some people curious as to what this to-do list looks like. im not gonna show everything, but here are some of the bullet points that are currently still unfinished. i would like to remind you all though that new bullet points may still get added throughout development.

the to-do list is currently 83% complete with 144 out of 174 bullet-points marked off.

aside from the planned pvp stuff, theres not really that much left. even a lot of the planned pvp movesets shouldn't be too bad, considering their scope. it's mainly sans who's the big bad here. that said, with how that situation as it is, it may still take a good while. i am genuinely really happy with the current state of the update though. a few friends suggested i should just release the update as is, but i believe that won't do. theoretically i could just fix all the bugs, finish sans and bam, but i want to work off this entire list. i've been hyping up this update for so long and i want it to be the best it can be

in other news, you may recall that i said i've been wanting to talk to some people again and tie up some loose ends. while there are still a few people i've unfortunately yet to talk to, i'm happy to say that i did manage to tie up some loose ends with quite a few people. i'm pretty grateful for that. to be completely honest, every time someone reached out i was pretty nervous. it's kinda scary when someone arrives in your DMs and, although you have no real reason to worry, you just worry because you don't know whether or not they'll be friendly or if they just hate you. in almost all of these cases though, that worry was for naught and i'm incredibly grateful that people reached out to me.

that said, i do believe i may have, by which i mean i most definitely did, left some people on read. that's genuinely not my intention, i'm just absolutely terrible with DMs. if i didn't want to talk to someone, i'd just tell them, so, for anyone who's been left on read and also happens to be reading this, you are free to just message me again.. and possibly again. it- well- look, aight, sometimes i'm busy, sometimes i just prefer to stay in my little comfort bubble, either way, i read the message, i dont reply in the moment, i forgot i got the message.

as a side note, while i was a bit nervous and anxious when i was about to talk to people, there actually was precisely one case where i was extremely anxious, almost scared even, and ironically the person never actually ended up directly contacting me due to some circumstances and a change of mind. it really is strange how something as trivial as a failed attempt at contact from someone else on the internet can cause feelings akin to panic under the right circumstances.

that said though, should there be anyone else looking to tie up some loose ends, i will put any and all anxiety and bad blood aside to hold up civil conversation.

anyway, that should be it for our first monthly (or bimonthly?) little transparency chill devlogs. if you want something fun to play while you wait for the MTO update, i highly recommend pizza tower, a game you've probably heard more than enough of at this point. it's good though and i'd recommend playing it and getting into it yourself before you get sick and tired of hearing about it. lord knows i nearly got sick of hearing about it before i played it. now im the one making everyone else sick and tired

happy easter, y'all