Keeping Promises (Patreon)

Hey guys! Wanted to take a minute to check in and talk about upcoming features that have been... well, "upcoming" for a while. I've been working on adding in more fancy stuff on the side with every new release, and I've caught up on most of the promises I've made, but I've had to pace myself since there was just a ton of new stuff added with the overhaul of rewards a few months ago.

Right now, there are three things that are still "in the works."

It's still slow going getting the new GUI going for the Deluxe version. Mostly it's been waiting on the artist I contacted, which has been frustrating. They got some nice looking stuff set up to start, but they ran into a lot of personal trouble that delayed things. At this point I'm pretty conflicted about sticking it out or dumping all the progress we've made and trying to find another interface artist. Either way, I intend to get this going properly soon.

The enhanced cheat functionality for Void Masters was saved for last since it was going to take advantage of the new GUI, but I'll be diving in on that for this coming release, even if I have to use more placeholder graphics for it for now. The main challenge with that will just be making sure that every last scene in the game "works" okay when being forced to reload as-is, when many are meant to only be seen once, or under certain circumstances.

Lastly, as many of you have noticed, I've passed the milestone for adding animations to the game... several times. My support numbers tend to fluctuate above and below that line monthly with how Patreon works, but I've started working on it all the same. Those of you with access to the Art Archive may notice a few new sketches in there from the first stages of that process. I've been nervous about this one for a while, partly because I know very little about making animations "work," and partly because MVOL is already getting rather big for a flash file, and I think that's part of why it's been giving some people trouble running it. An animation can take up a ton of space, so we're gonna be experimenting with the tricks you can pull with Flash to make that more manageable. That'll hopefully also help us make variants work in the animation, which would otherwise be pretty much impossible. So it's a pretty involved process, but we're working on it!

As far as I can think of, that's all the extra content I've got queued up to work on on the side, along with whatever my supporters vote in as extra features or scenes for each release. I'm hoping to have all of it done within the next version or two!

Things are entering the final stage with MVOL in several ways. It's both a wonderful feeling and a scary one, being this close to the end. Keep an eye out for more news on how the game's development will "finish up" and what comes next before long!

Thanks for reading!