Conversion Progress (Patreon)

Greetings! Progress continues on the MZ port, though it's proving to be a slightly bigger job than originally anticipated. Because of that, and because the retrospectives made me realize I shouldn't spend too long away from the story, I've decided to do the combat revamp later, so the next release will only contain the MZ port and a new H-scene.

I finished the conversion tool that did a lot of the work of switching things over, and am now working entirely in MZ. But there are still a lot of smaller things I need to fix by hand (though the tool told me where a lot of them are.) I spent several days last week converting animations to work with the new system, and am currently finishing up work on action sequences (this is what makes the characters/enemies move around and do cool stuff when using their abilities.) After that, I'll be going through all the skills and states and make sure they work like they're supposed to under the new systems. Then there a bunch of little things to fix, and then I need to write the save conversion tool... It's a lot of work, but the end is beginning to come into sight. Not to jinx things, but I'm hoping for a mid-January release.

I definitely enjoy working in MZ more than in MV. The interface is nicer in a lot of little ways, and the plugins I'm using now seem better thought out. Making action sequences, in particular, is a *whole* lot simpler and more straightforward. The performance differences are pretty substantial; the game feels much smoother, and  hopefully this will translate into a more immersive game experience.

By the way, I might end up calling the next release version 1.0. Not because the game is complete (it isn't), nor because 1.0 comes after 0.9 (it doesn't in semantic versioning.) Semantic versioning is what I've tried to use with the build numbers, and under that you're supposed to change the major version number when you break APIs. Well, saves are sort of an API, and while I'll be providing a tool to convert saves to work with the new version, they won't work directly. So... new engine, new major version. I kinda like it!

That's all I have for now. If you don't hear from me again this week (though you might!) have a Merry Christmas or whatever else it is you might celebrate! Thank you for your support!