flying by with an update~ (Patreon)

firstly, follow up from last time's poll
wowowow, i really appreciate all the positive comments and such ty all so much for the support !!!!!
i am very grateful to have been able to make something you've all enjoyed, and i can only hope that e19 rounds it out properly and gives a satisfying finish for everyone. <3

i figured that the story vs gameplay categories would be evenly split......... but wow, i didn't expect them to be literally tied. as of writing this, they are even, vote for vote.
wild.
in fact all of it is fairly even across the board.
except for puzzles.
poor puzzles.
ah well. 

i will say that even though they're not everybody's jam, i do enjoy making them. while not every single one is a banger, i'm grateful that i've had the chance to creatively try so many different types of puzzles. it's been fun for me in that regard. contrary to the 'sadistic puzzle' reputation, i'd much rather see people succeed in overcoming them, and i hope to learn better how to facilitate that in the future.

alas, it probably won't be with this project. 

so, i owe you all a few things. first, an update on what's going on lately. it's hard to give a theme to it-- more of those miscellaneous strings of updates that have been in posts of recent past. i've got another collection of those ready but will hold out for just a little longer while we slot in a few more last minute improvements.

i say 'last minute' because i would very much like to be done with everything that isn't testing, by the end of the year. i'd say we're pretty well on track with that right now, but holidays might throw a small wrench into progress. we'll see! everyone is working very hard on finishing stuff up right now. let's go over the list!

perry has been doing most of the heavy script lifting when it comes to the QoL and password implementations everyone's been excited about! he's also been staying well on top of the bug reports as they've come up so far, which is great because i want to have a clean slate for testing!

crim has been filling in holes in sprites and maps all over the place, and generally touching many things up to look better than ever! currently she's working on doing a last minute full revamp to one more area in game before we wrap up! :eyes:

azzie has still been plugging away at the masses of dialogue that need to exist in the nightclub. writing for the entire cast is tough, but the little details and her brand of lightheartedness make for delightful and easy reading

cass is still out here optimizing. lately she's been focusing on efficiency in handling animations and load times. she's also preparing to take a jackhammer to the randomizer and make it more flexibile than anyone ever asked for. also some teams on the side of things. there's always more teams, isn't there? 

robin and vulpes are each just finishing up the last couple of (z-moves) for their part! pretty much everything they make looks wild. it's lit, fam. 

smeargle is right there with them in finishing up the last of the non-z-moves, as well as several extra-mile-esque pet projects of he has been steadily plugging away at for weeks if not months now! you can see the fruits of one of them as streamed on the patron server here!

the boy is v i b i n g 

last but far from least, marcello has been making strides on a surprise special [redacted] for everyone to enjoy! they seem to have been having a lot of fun with it, so i hope everyone else will enjoy the wild ride when it comes to!

...oh, also there's this ame person somewhere in the mix. my projects lately have been finalizing the last few field effect revisions we've had slated... organizing the secret room (not actually a secret-- you know the gamefreak room in every pokemon game? ya, that), and generally putting some finishing ends on the nightclub that we couldn't do properly before finishing every quest. it's kind of like, post-postgame??? idk. i'll hurt myself if i say something like that. but that nightclub work is probably going to be most of my bit for the rest of next week too... that and generally helping out wherever i end up being needed.
and then?????
and then???????????
i don't know...
silence...
testing....
the sweet release of freedom????
it could be anything....

we have supervised testing, multi-supervised testing special bonus round, alpha, and then you all. it's probably still going to be a couple months before it gets to you all. hopefully it'll be a much smoother experience for the wait. 

that said, the actually putting-stuff-in-the-game bit needs to wrap up real quick. to that end, i am probably going to be cutting off a couple rewards as of january 6th. incidentally, i can probably keep slipping people in the battle tower during testing with no fuss, but the thing that's going to be obnoxious to update is the credit list. so, after january 6th, i won't be adding new patrons to the credit list. 

if you are a patron and reading this right now, you're already on it. as always, if you don't want to be, let me know. if you want to be on under a certain name, let me know. this list is also going to appear in-game directly!  be advised. 

..ok, i think that's all the house-keeping? 

ok

in that case, one more fun thing. one more person doing stuff on the side in addition to everyone above is falcon. had some tech trouble lately. and exams. we hate to see it. :pray: for falcon's computer. but i was holding out on you a bit, see, because he actually finished this a while ago!

i was surprised ciel suddenly won the character poll by a landslide. but for this dynamic pose, i'm so glad she did.

more commit posts soon i guess lol.