hey (Patreon)

hi

it's me again

what's up

it's been about... five, six months since i said i was dropping off of the face of the earth?
somehow you're still here.
i love that about you.
thank you.

in the past six months, cass and i have:

• gotten me steady on anti-depressants
• confronted my dad about childhood traumas
• processed some other traumas that i picked up more recently
• began a personal writing project
• tried magic mushrooms ??
• learned that my grandpa died five years ago (didnt know him)
• finished cass's thesis and got her master's
• weathered through like four different medical issues (no lingering concerns dw)
• done a lot of practicing being aware of my feelings
• started running a d&d campaign
• finished the let's play of the main story of reborn 
• learned that my grandma died last month (didnt know her)
• met the entire other half of my family that i never had contact with before
• learned that they're actually cool??
• landed a job for cass!
• now gotta figure out moving to a new city

time! it has been a time. it has been some time. 

and frankly, as is always the case with moving and life being in flux, it is likely to continue being a time for a couple months yet.
i actually was planning to make this sort of post a couple weeks ago and then all the stuff with my grandma and family happened. so i once again had to throw my hands and be like 'ok idk what my life is now'

but with a bit more distance from my stress, i feel like i can at least, deal with stuff. with posts, development, people... life... stuff. 

i feel like my hiatus post was maybe... a bit melodramatic. maybe that's how my insecurity manifests, who knows. it's not like i magically am Good At Emotions now... but i am better at it. it is taking active practice.
weirdly, the thing that helped most was the mushrooms?? i feel like i gained 15 emotional-awareness levels overnight. bizarre. i've always been anti-drug-- i still haven't even tried The Pot despite living in colorado-- but turns out things that are used for therapy and not known to have harmful side effects or cause addiction can actually be good. crazy. i still have to sort all that out with my personal values, but here we are.

i've gotten the feedback over the last few months that i seem to be doing better. one person put it like, i may not be as active but it feels like there's more of me when i am. i hope to be able to apply that to development, and sharing development with all of you. a lot of my posts in the past have been somewhat erratic, and that can be fun, too, but... not good as a habit. 

i want to be able to approach these posts with the same casualness of chancing into someone in public and talking about my work. and i can be like "here, check out this art we've been working on recently" and just show them on my phone. no stress. no pressure.
and then they say something stupid like "wow ur a really good drawer" and i have to hide the body. well.
the stress and pressure is all me in the first place, you all have frankly always been great about it and i continue to be incredibly grateful for the patience and support.
so i would like to honor that by talking about a few different projects today! 

Starlight

While I've been out, things have been slow but the dev team has been steadily pushing onward. Big shouts to everyone for keeping on with all of that. Unfortunately I don't have huge strides to talk about-- we are still getting out from under the avalanche of 'mountain of new character art that has to be done at the start of the game'
...But we are getting there. We have some designs to show, and I'll give an overview on how much is left to do with that in the future.

For my part, I've realized that I've tied myself up too readily in trying to push forward individual assets. I realllllly want to get this off the ground, but perhaps my approach has been a little too, let's say, desperate? So, with moderate exception, I plan to take a more hands off role when it comes to art, spriting, composition, and programming, and focus instead on the writing, eventing, mapping, and design.
...Hmmmm this sounded a lot better when I didn't list like four different things still. Ah well... You... you get the point.
If that means I end up waiting on some assets now and then, and development of this does not move as fast as it theoretically could... perhaps that's a good problem to have. It will free up my focus for other projects. More might get done overall. That's my hope, anyway.

So we'll come back and talk about this more in the future, but for today, I think I haven't shown this yet and we've been sitting on it for a while. Aulyra's combat model:

This is just clipped from our animation program. Some parts of the weapon are turned off for now while the animation is still being worked on. We'll talk about it more in detail later. In the meanwhile, shout-out to Falcon for drawing it, and to Vulpes for getting her rigged up with some new tech we hadn't tried out before.

D&D?

So I mentioned above that I'm running a campaign right now. I actually first drafted this particular module last year during e19's testing, and ran it in early summer. Over this spring I went back to it and expanded the scenario a bit, and now I'm running it with a few friends, including cass.  I've put a non-insignificant amount work into it so far, and for the most part everyone seems to be really enjoying it. 

So naturally, I've occasionally had thoughts about what, if at all, would be the most appropriate way to share it with you all? I've considered just posting a few bits of art here and there, or a brief summary. Or maybe since we run this via text, we could just shape it up and share the players' adventures with you as a series. I could also polish it up as a TTRPG module that others could use too.

But the reason I haven't done any of that yet is because I also have thought-- I am planning to run this adventure again-- and maybe again after that, improving it each time. Perhaps there is a good chance that I involve some of you as players. I am unsure! So for now I am simply leaving the door open.

Or-- and I had this thought myself but managed to suppress it until cass mentioned it and thus bestowed me with severe brainrot-- perhaps it would be reasonable to make this into a scripted game that anyone could play. (cass: i sure think this is a really good idea. who knows, maybe other sessions of it can also improve a standalone game for it. idk! found out some other games have a similar background, and i know that ame's been reeeeeeeeally into working on this campaign.........)

I'd be interested in hearing if you have strong feelings about any of these options.

Reborn

Rejuv is in testing right now, and once it releases, the door will be open to finally get in a bug fix update. That'll still take some time, but I'm actually excited to at least get some gears moving there again! Even though I want to move away from it and get other things going, I also like the idea of dipping back now and then and just showing the project some support as a way of saying thanks to all of you (and the greater community) for sticking with it all this time. 

There will also be some opportunities in the near future for you all to get involved in helping out with some community-led developments! Expect more information about that early next week.

Thanks again to everyone for being here. Love, gratitude, and candy-coated hearts.

(cass again: hi
back when i first talked to ame about how her approach to devving was maybe not the healthiest, part of my argument for a hiatus was that even if it takes 12-18 months to unjelly her jam, she'd not only be happier doing her work by the end of it but also would probably be able to work more efficiently. productivity is a cult but sometimes it has some good points.
i sure think she's doing a lot better now. life's just a bit less heavy on her in general. plus she has family? and her dad is, like, better? and i have a job? things are lookin up ppl

anyway this is the part where i say i'm proud of her and get her all embarrassed and post this without her knowing it's there~