what do you mean i still have to tell people what i've been doing in order for them to know? (Patreon)

you haven't developed telepathic powers yet? i mean, technically speaking that's good for me because then you'd know all my tricks....... but i always think "instead of talking about making the game, you should just make the game..."
and then suddenly it's october of next year and i'm constantly wondering what i'm doing with my life, what i've done with my time, despite the fact that we are on the verge of having something that can possibly be considered almost acceptable for a testing release.

maybe nothing will ever be good enough for me. it will probably be good enough. but will it ever sate the regrets i have due to the unceasing passage of time? has this simply become a blog about all of my emotional hangups and feelings of inadequacy? can i not better demonstrate the gratitude i feel for being allowed against all odds to do this in the first place? nothing can truly demonstrate that depth of gratitude so instead i feel like i should simply make better content for you in thanks. but then i return to my doubts-- here i am, talking about it instead of making it.

i promise this post was supposed to have content.
let's go back to the basics.

what have we done lately?
no more existence logs, it's been a month. let's just hit the key points....

• we added on-hit particles to attacks
• added some more scenes to the chapter
• added a system for buffs and debuffs
• added UI information that shows up when idling
• integrated combat arts into the demo
• lots of bug fixes/QA jank
• tested deployment version to see what breaks when not test playing (portraits, save previews)
• made pause screen graphics
• parallaxed another map some other art
• tested with the rest of the team, including deployment on mac
• got more CtD errors and spent a week end dying over it
• upgraded to a modern version of the player engine (separate from rpg maker) with higher performance instead of the version from 2014 like we had been using.
• accidentally melted the entire game screen while implementing the pause screen graphics:
• 
• 
• 
• 
• unmelted the entire game screen
• watched cass make something that could rival many modern artists by exploiting a bug with the pause screen that spawned pause screen graphics into the game infinitely at random positions:
• 
• added damage text pop ups on attacks/parries/etc
• added an opening battle ritual

there you go that's a month of work in a nutshell, with a lot of details and minor stuff and other assets skipped over

what's left to do before patron testing?

• we have a bunch of sound effects to add into pretty much everything
• and a fair amount of bugs to fix
• and then some final-round testing of our own to do 

...and so, we plan to start testing next week, starting with the VIP patrons like i mentioned in the previous post. 

side note here that "testing" is still a strong word because we may end up adding more features and stuff afterwards but at the least we can get some initial feedback in on all that

and also

as time goes on and we get deeper into refining this demo as opposed to making it i continually find myself downsizing more and more in the way of thinking
well i really need to get back to work on reborn so -this- can probably wait until the full game
and i am finding more and more that probably expecting to do so much of the demo was, perhaps, a mistake.

i am prone to doing too much. 

some days you just need to release some damn content.

thank you all for being patient with me through all my mistakes <3