So, it's been around 10 months since my last post.

In that last post I talked about how I was beginning to redesign the first dungeon. When I'd first put that idea on the table, I was only looking at redesigning the first and second floors, as I'd thought I was pretty happy with the higher floors.

Turns out, that was not the case. The entirety of the dungeon was in dire need of a change. So I decided to rework the dungeon entirely, how the player was supposed to progress through, other smaller rooms, everything. Admittedly this has take much longer than I thought a rework would take.

Though I'd say there is one person to blame at the center of how long it's taken, and that's me. The end of last year and going into this year has been tough for me, I lost my job going into the second half of 2023 and have been struggling to find another since. That took much more of a toll than I thought it would've. I found myself wanting to work on my game with a whole bunch of new ideas, but every time I would open the project I would just sit there on the last map drawing a blank on what I wanted to do. This block had been going on from when I lost my job up until about early March, when I told myself that if I keep going the way I'm going, RTP MV would just end up as another project to throw into the "cancelled games" folder. So I buckled down and pretty much forced myself to think of ideas and put them in the game. In the end though, it worked. I'm hyped to continue working on this project and getting the story demo out.

Though I know my limits, my brain is stupid, so I'm trying to find a way to work on my game with out crossing into the stupid section of my brain. I know that if I spend every waking minute working on this it will only hurt me and this project, so I'm trying out a new structured schedule, where (hopefully) I'll be able to balance my school work, game work, and also playing games and streaming (which I haven't done in a bit either) with deadline of when I need to have certain things completed by. Personally I think this will be a great help in making sure I stay on course and get the story demo out in good time. It's only recently hit me that I'm the one who has to keep myself on course, because I'm doing this alone, I have to be the one to keep my own deadlines, I have to be the one to reprimand myself when I go off course and it screws with the release schedule. I know the fact that this fact is hitting me a little bit later than it should but hey, progress is progress.

Speaking of progress, as a part of my new schedule, instead of having these sporadic devlogs with a mountain of info, I'd like to start doing these kinds of things monthly.

So to make up for the last few months of nothing let's talk about what's been done since my last post!

Obviously there's the first dungeon rework, but I've also done a massive lore overhaul as well (not that you would know that).

But that doesn't mean that there's not much left because there is still many things left to do.

I still need to finish the reworked 3F and 4F along with all their side rooms.

Then I need to start and finish the basement.

Then I need to make the first boss and make sure that's balanced with the game.

After that it's the soundtrack, playtesting and the last once over before release.

The next big thing that I've been working on is integrating the GameJolt API into the game, so far, it's working great!

I spent most of today setting up the framework for how I want it to work, the only big things I still need to work out are the trophies and where I want the player to unlock them, and I'd also have a new idea for a sort of "score-attack" mode. At this moment I have a decent idea of how I want to implement it, but no spoilers, you'll just have to wait until the full game comes out to see how I plan on doing it.

Overall, I think I'm in a better place with this game than I have been in a long time, I'm not getting as angry as I used to get when something didn't work, I'm just trying to take things slow and using my logical thinking skill to help me solve my problems.

But before I go I want to state something...

My current wanted deadline for the story demo releasing is before the end of 2024, and for the full game to release before the end of 2025. I don't have any exact months or days yet, but I'm confident that If I follow my schedule to a tee, I can forsee a future where the demo will release in late 2024. As for the full game's release window, I'm not as confident I'll be able to make that, it all depends what happens this year and how much progress I'll be able to make during 2024, so that 2025 is most definitely interchangeable at this point.

Well with that, this big boy devlog has finally come to an end.

Thank you so much for reading and sticking by my work.

See you next month!

Stuck