[Rewards] starshine, takedowns, and the future (Patreon)

I'm still ironing out post-game's features exactly (also will be open to some suggestions) but I'm not turning my attention to that until the game's main story is completed. 
also... i may take somewhat of a break between the two to get something else going... y'all know?

y'all know.
basically, my plan is to release the demo of starlight before finishing reborn. 

of course, that's kind of a bold claim right now, considering the demo isn't made whatsoever, nor is it close. the battle system is quickly becoming playable, but it's not quite there yet. and i'll have to do a lot of battle/speech models before that point.

but like, that's fine.
i consider it pretty important to get that started. i want something i can point people to now so that they know what they'll be sticking around for after reborn. that's especially true for you all as my beloved patrons, but just as much for the community as a whole. i don't intend to let it become a ghost town between games, after all ~

and for starlight in very particular-- it's not like i can quite point to fire emblem and say "it's this kind of game," because even though i'm basing the tactical side of it off of FE as much as possible, it's also very different. i'm basically making a sub-genre here, as seen in my tentatively calling starlight an "action tRPG". to my knowledge, there's nothing really like it yet. that's why i've been planning on this demo for quite some time, even though the chapter i've chosen for it is not the very beginning of the game. i want something that will immediately show the system off more fully than tutorial levels.

so the order of operations going forward is:

Reborn E19 story > Starlight Demo > Reborn Post-game / Final release > Starlight Chapter 1

A lot of you guys have probably heard of Nintendo's recent Essentials takedown. spooky. for those who are not very clear, Essentials is the scriptset reborn uses as a base for the 'Pokemon' side of the game and Nintendo finally DMCA'd it. the fact that they're going after that in itself is a smart move since it means no more projects can be started... well theoretically. I'm sure the links to Essentials will float around indefinitely, but it's a lot more difficult now. It also means NoA is aware of these kinds of games in more general now.

so i've already said publicly, it doesn't actually change what I'm doing with Reborn. We have our copy of essentials, it's an older one, and it's modded to hell and back. Not that Nintendo cares about that-- but I mean that we're set to finish out strong anyway. 

that is also why i, in particular, want to finish out E19 quick. a look at the development blog shows i've kind of pushed everything not immediately related to the episode's story off of the scoreboard. if, during the long development time of starlight's demo and the post game (which can certainly go concurrently to an extent), we happen to get the young C&D, i can at least just casually slip the completed story under the door as we close it. 

aside from the fact that nintendo is active and caring about this stuff, there actually may be an increased risk of that happening to us now. I'm not sure to what extent it's true, but when we found out about the Essentials takedown, one of the admins of Relic Castle joked that people would just start using Reborn instead of Essentials, hollowing it out and making their games from that. 

uhh, honestly?

shit boi, i would. I mean, if Reborn weren't my project and I had a full understanding of everything we've fixed/added/completed (especially once the animations are done) (and double especially since i'm not sure Essentials has fully implemented new generations including sprites??) ... yeah, it would be way easier.
Though, according to that admin, it's also because we're apparently one of the only projects that is just like blatantly ok across the board with letting people use scripts/assets/whatever 

I don't really want to step back on that now that it's arguably more important than ever for people to have access to that stuff. I think I'd rather take the additional risk, and be ready to leak in case anything happens. 

But based on past precedents, it's not likely something would happen until the game is finished anyway.
So maybe it's fine.

..... anyway, all of this has been to say that, since Reborn's release won't be until after starlight's demo anyway, I've been letting myself work on that more frequently lately instead of frequently redirecting myself to reborn. Since it's not like it would impact the total time it takes to release reborn in my plan anyway.
Because of the above stuff it is probably fairly important I finish 19's story with some prejudice, but in general...
Working on Starlight so much feels pretty awesome tbh.

I think I've made this post long enough, but the point I wanted to make here was... thank you all for enabling me, not only to finish Reborn and make it usable for everyone, but for letting Starlight become a thing already. Who knows how far behind I'd be without you all? I don't want to think about that world. 

While we're here, a brief update on the starfront:

i've got hp properly working through the system now, including from out of combat. and i rewrote the combat scripts to be much simpler and use the new image handling stuff. hit/miss now works. and added some light effects around the tracks hit blocks to help players see at a glance which direction they're moving and where the fine points are. 

next up will be making properly animating HP bars. i drew one of them last night, just need to get it in game next. 

i remember back in the dark ages of 2003 where there wasn't a way to animate custom battle system's HP bars in rpg maker besides literally making a separate graphic for every possible pixel of difference that it could display at-- and then making a separate conditional to display each of those graphics.
what a beautiful self-referential and masking-capable world we now live in...
and all the more beautiful for y'all being a part of it with me.

are you flattered yet? you should be. 

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the usual bits, for patrons newly pledging during the month of august~:

• everyone's been added to the credit list. if you don't want to be on there, or if you want me to use a specific name, please let me know! i use reborn forum names where possible.
• for level 5+ patrons, everyone's accounts have been hooked up to the supporter status~
• messages have been sent to other levels for trainer names
• finally, if you have somehow been missed or if you would like to call in a higher tier rewards, pleeeeeease send me a message and let me k-now. i am not far away! only slow. sometimes.