Summer Mid-Year Meta Progress Update (elements lets gooo) (Patreon)

hELLO! (OOPS CAPS LOCK LOL) Today's post a meta update. No asset releases, so you can skip this one if you don't care about this stuff.

Anyways, last time I made a meta update, I mostly talked about the reasons for the delay with the full release for Elements (that post also announced the OpenRTP tilesets, which have since been released, and I'm very proud of them).

Summer time also means the middle of the year, and since I've just returned from my vacation, it's the perfect time to review our 2022 goals and progress. I laid out those goals at the beginning of the year, so I'm going to use this chance to check in on that.

So, first up:

Elements

Ok. The elements core character set is more or less finished, and it has been for some time. Patrons have had access to it, so the only delay has been for the official release. None of this is news.

As mentioned in that post, I was waiting on some more info that might change how things go forward with the publishing. It's been a while, so right now where I'm at is this: it's time to quit stalling and just go ahead with the release, whatever happens. 🤪

So over the next couple of weeks, I'll be putting together the pre-built elements characters, the PDF guide, readme file, etc -- all of the things that I've talked about before which I've been sitting on. We've been at this stage for a while, with some delays that I've talked about that had to do with external reasons. But I'm done stalling, so as soon as it's ready, I'll be sending it off to be published for RPGMaker and then publishing it on my own page.

Looking forward to finally tying up the loose ends and just saying "f*ck it, gotta release it" LOL!!

Elements Tiles

I'm not gonna say too much here, because you probably know -- I'll be working on elements tiles for the next release.

Importantly, this stuff will go side-by-side with new TF tiles and requests as I fill them. You've seen this before-- I've already begun doing this with recent tile add-on releases.

The great thing about the Elements tiles is that they will fit alongside the TF stuff just fine, only with different colors. So going forward, I'll continue to release tile add-ons with both color variations. The eventual Elements master tilesets will work like a huge remaster of TF but with lots of new stuff as well.

I've already shown a lot of these, and like I've said before-- because of the 'remaster' nature of these, this set will be an ongoing long-term project rather than a more focused sprint.

Lo-Bit Stuff

So in the "2022 goals and plans" post at the beginning of the year, I talked about the lo-bit style.

Of course, with the Lo-Bit week last week, I can check that one off the to-do list! I'm really proud of these guys.

I'll probably put together a RPGMaker-compatible version of the lo-bit tiles, so I can release the whole collection as an asset pack. There'll certainly be room for extras to fill out the tile-sheets, so if you have some ideas or requests for more tiles in that style, definitely let me know!

But for the most part, I consider the core style finished. Anything else going forward will be extra. Feels really nice to have that done, as it was one of my big side-goals for this year.

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That's everything from the original "2022 goals" thread (other than the tiers re-work, which has been settled for months now).

The other thing that I want to mention is about patron releases going forward. While I was on vacation, floating around in the swimming pool, I couldn't keep my mind off of this stuff! 😚 So, here are some things that I've been thinking about:

Patron Other stuff?

To prevent this post from being TOO LONG, I'm just gonna drop these ideas:

• Tile Variants

New tiles made out of old tiles. Nothing really fancy, but just MORE of what we already have. Stuff like new rock formations, flower beds, tree shapes, maybe some more patterns for walls and terrains, etc. Could revisit previous themes with some more details to flesh out the set. Just extra variety of tiles that we already have.

I haven't made too much of these -- usually a set will include a couple variants as part of the original release and that's enough. I figure that if people want more, it's easy enough for users to "franken" together some additional combinations of tiles.

Would you be interested in releases like this? If so, give suggestions for which previous releases you'd like to revisit and expand on.

• Tutorials/Gifs/Progress Animations

The reason I don't really do this kind of thing these days is because it takes a lot of extra time, vs just creating the asset itself.

I have seen a lot of this kind of thing on twitter etc, and I know that people seem to like them. I have no idea if patrons would be interested though -- maybe you'd just prefer that I put the time into producing more assets -- let me know if you think it'd be worth the extra time -- if there's any demand for this sort of thing.

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OKAY -- that's it for today's meta/update/progress post.

I'll be back later this week, on Friday, for a release on our regular schedule. You can expect something from the request thread in the classic style. See you then.

Thanks!