Biweekly Update - 6-11-2023 (Personal stuff, high-res pixel art, and starting development on v0.47)

Hey everyone. So, without beating around the bush, the last few weeks didn't go quite like I hoped they would - we only ended up streaming once, and I've still been struggling to get myself back to full working capacity. I'm not going to try and BS you with this post to make it seem better than it is - things are slow right now, and I'm trying my best to get over this funk, but life keeps finding new and exciting ways to make that difficult.

I won't be talking about this beyond what I'm writing now right now, because it's a very serious and personal thing that I'm not comfortable being open about, but one of my close friends recently admitted to being suicidal. They're okay for now, but I probably don't even need to explain how the situation has been affecting me. I hate to have to ask you all for even more patience, when you've already been so patient with me and the CPE team, but it's all I can really ask for right now while we try to navigate this.

With all that being said, I don't want to make it sound like we're not getting *anything* done, because that's also not true. Our musician is back at it, working on some of the new music tracks we need for the story rewrite, and I've still been picking away at the game's scripts to alter them for the new story. In particular, I finally figured out an answer to one of the remaining uncertainties about Alicia's backstory, so I'm really happy about that, it'll help a lot with writing certain cutscenes.

Aside from me, Orexius has been working really hard, both on cutscene animations, and on something new we're experimenting with.

Pixelated cutscene illustrations! This is obviously still extremely WIP, so parts of it are either unfinished or just need some more work. As part of the story rework, there will be a lot of new and/or altered cutscenes, and we wanted to experiment with illustrations to help add more life to them. Aside from CGs (which only Alicia is present in), there aren't any moments in the game where you get to see the characters in higher resolution, so we don't have much chance to show them in detail. Illustrations will help get around that problem, and I'm hoping they'll allow everyone to get even more attached to the cast. Orex previously had very little experience with higher-resolution art, but he's been really improving lately, and being able to have someone on the team handle illustrations instead of outsourcing makes it a lot more feasible for us to have them.

There's another piece of art he's been working on, but that one is decidedly less SFW, so it'll be in another Patron-only post after this one like always.

One last thing before this post is over, just want to update everyone on what our near-future plans are. It's been a bit since the last playable update came out, and I don't want there to be another year between major updates, so after deliberating on it for a while, the team has made the decision to start work on v0.47 now. We're at a pretty lucky point in the game's story right now - without any spoilers, the events that come next aren't really changing at all from the rewrite, so we can make a bit more content now without worrying about needing to replace it later when the story changes.

Our development priorities won't change too much in the short term, I'll still be working on the level design tool, but now the focus will be to get it to a usable enough state to start making new levels ASAP. I figure it'll be easier to develop it that way, anyway - make it usable but basic, then steadily upgrade it with new features as I figure out what I want from the tool. It's still going to take us a while to get v0.47 out - there's a new biome included (and possibly a new boss fight), so there's a lot that needs to be done to make it happen.

Spoilers for a late-game ability in v0.46 in the next paragraph, so skip over it if you haven't gotten there yet and don't want spoilers: I'm also going to be experimenting with a completely changed version of the Hoverjets powerup. Currently, the Hoverjets have two functions: holding Jump in midair to slow your descent, and extending a grounded dash indefinitely. I have no issues with the first part, but I've realized that I really don't like the way the "infinite grounded dash" function affects movement; it's such an accessible, powerful, and fast form of movement that the moment you unlock it, horizontal travel is "solved" for the rest of the game. I'm thinking about this mostly from a speedrunning perspective, and it feels like movement in the second half of the game will be really boring to watch, and also not that exciting to play. An ability like the Hoverjets extended ground dash makes more sense for near the end of the game, I think. I have an idea for a completely new ability that also fits the Hoverjets name, so I'm going to be experimenting with that ingame, and I'll share more about it when I have more concrete info. Some of the lategame level design will need to be altered, of course, so if the Hoverjets rework goes well, the new version of it + altered level design will also be in v0.47.

Alright, I think that's about it for me today. Again, thank you all SO much for being so understanding even though things are slow right now. We're doing our best, and with the focus on v0.47, I fully expect to have some good stuff to show off in the next few weeks. I still fully intend on getting back into streaming, even if it's not as usual as often right now, so keep an eye out for those. Thanks for reading everyone - hope to see you at the streams, and if not, we'll see you again in the next update.