Weekly Update (12-23-24) (Patreon)

To start, Merry Christmas to those who celebrate and happy holidays to everyone!

I got a lot of writing done this week. Honestly, an insane amount of writing:

 

I don't think I'll quite hit 100k, since I'm like 99% done and just have a tiny bit more to write (I really wanted to be done saturday night, but this has been... a lot XD So I almost finished last night but not quite). Still, this will be effectively 25% longer than the previous longest update (v0.12). My tentative name for Ch 13 is "The Ties That Bind." Going to be a bit tight finishing everything from here, but I'm decently confident in the 3rd as the release date. I'd be tempted to take another week to alleviate time pressure except I'm really ready for a break, and the only way there is through the end of the update XD

As I said last week, I think it's time to reveal that Ariadne art though! I had previously said I had no plans to change Ariadne's art, and this was true when I said it. It still is, in a fundamental way. But, if there was one part of it I was never as fully sold on, it was her outfit. Mimo, as it happened, loved the idea of doing a new outfit, and so:

 

What this means for other characters isn't 100% set in stone yet, but the ability to do new outfits this way opens up a whole new world of possibilities that I may explore to some extent (and maaybe some redoes for major characters with lower quality art--undecided for sure). Can see more thoughts on that in my $10 art preview post if interested.

In addition to the art, though. having new and better busts makes me sad not to see them a bit more often, though. I'm personally not a fan of bust dialog systems, as I feel they obscure an already cramped screen, so I don't really have any interest in that. But, one thing I've always liked is how the Trails series does "cut ins" of the character's art during their S-breaks. So, I've decided to make something similar for "ultimate" abilities. Here's an example of the one I did for Ariadne's Wildfire:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvUZumiNnt8

This and several others will be in the update! But for now, back to work. I have a -lot- of combat design and testing to get done. XD