Ruby Red

Hello hello, you might be wondering why I, Ruby, am posting this devblog? Well… someone decided to go to Japan again! The audacity of that man… I haven’t even been to Japan once! :/ oh well… Besides all that, the rest of this devblog was mostly handled by him. So, take it from here, Posty of the past! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Howdy folks! Hope everyone is doing well, me? Well as of this post going out I will once again be touching down in Tokyo, Japan. Loved it so much that I’ve already returned to spend even more of my life savings on silly pieces of shiny cardboard. Anyway, enough about that, today’s blog will highlight some of the work that our newest members have been producing since joining the team, but speaking about new members, we had one more join us in recent months! For those who don’t already know… I’m pleased to welcome Twoslashes to the Desolation development team! He has joined us in the mapping and spriting department and has already hit the ground running in producing some high quality content for the game. His work I will be looking to share in a future development blog, so keep an eye out! But for now, I’m going to pass it to Mags as he walks through some of the sidequest content he has been whipping up. SPOILER ALERT, it contains frogs. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hey there, I’m Mags! I joined the team recently as an Eventer. I’ve been mostly working on sidequests, which is perfect because when left to my own devices I tend to add flavor text - sidequests, in my opinion, are very elaborate flavor text. Indeed, some may argue the point of the humble sidequest is to elaborate upon the world in small ways, to make it feel more lived in and fleshed out…. And some may argue its point is to give you new Pokemon. Both can be true. Also I talk a lot so be prepared for a lot of yapping. I’ll be going over the process of making a sidequest I’ve been working on that you’ll be able to find down in Blackview. To start with… that new Pokemon thing. As you all probably know, Gen 9 ‘mons are getting added to EP 7. Yay! I’m quite a big fan of Arboliva, myself. Anyway, new ‘mons means new sidequests, and new sidequests means new NPCs… Now, I could’ve been normal about it. Could’ve just had some random nameless guy be like “hey can i get your help with something” and you just get a normal Pokemon out of it. But unfortunately, I was left to my devices, and now we’ve got a whole new sidequest-exclusive NPC. Enter: Ribbert. Ribbert is an NPC with a long and storied development history, the history being that I wanted to make a frog pun and then I portmanteau’d Robert and Ribbit together. But why Ribbert? Why… him? He fulfills a few roles. His first role is that he acts as the main sidequest giver, of course. Interacting with him and hearing his spiel about frog Pokemon begins the quest “Hop To It!”, which is the sidequest that lets you catch Tadbulb. This is also the 2nd role he fulfills: everything about Ribbert is designed to make you go “okay, I see why this guy knows about Tadbulb”. His character is, first and foremost, an explanation as to how you could find Tadbulb in-universe. Tadbulb, for those who don’t read Pokedex entries for fun like I do, aren’t actually found underwater or in traditionally swamp-y places. No, their dex entries say they actually just chill mid-air. Like in the sky. Specifically when there’s thunderclouds… so they’re probably high up in a rainy place like Blackview. Obviously, for optimization and gameplay reasons, SV just has them hover above the ground, but the wonders of [ sparkling effect ] locked camera perspective [ sparkling effect ] means that we can just say Tadbulb are in the sky and have it be true without having to render dozens of frog lightbulbs mid-air whenever the player looks up. That leads to the next problem, though: if we wanna make it feel like the Tadbulb are doing what their dex entries say they do, how does the player acquire one? How many trainers DOES it take to catch a Tadbulb? The answer is two, because you’ll need help from a real FROG EXPERT. Ribbert! Ribbert just needs your help in prepping a special maneuver to get some Tadbulb down from the sky. It’s a fairly simple fetch quest, since it’s… like, I love Tadbulb, Bellibolt is really cool, but it’s not a game breaking ‘mon, so I didn’t want actually getting it to be a real chore. So a lot of the quest’s fun just comes from the stuff Ribbert says to you unprompted. Incidentally, ignore the lack of accents over the es. Bad habit of mine, I’ll put ‘em in the game later. Anyway, that’s how I got to making this Blackview sidequest. I try to think in the bounds of the world of Pokemon, especially if it’s a sidequest ABOUT a ‘mon. How does that ‘mon work, and if it’s not just milling about in the local foliage, how WOULD you get it? Then I work my sidequest around that central idea. The sidequest has to explain how you got your hands on this ‘mon. Additionally, the challenge of the sidequest should probably be proportional to the reward - in a game like Pokemon, there’s really little risk, since losing usually just sends you back to the Pokemon center. But even so, you gotta think about what the player is going to get in return for spending however much time on a specific fight or objective for a quest. If it’s not equivalent or better, then chances are they’ll just abandon it by the wayside. And of course, I love to use sidequests and flavor text to just build out the world. Even if it’s minor, the implication there’s some guy running around Aryith who just… REALLY likes frogs and is going on his own little adventures to find and catch them makes it feel like, y’know, the player isn’t the center of the universe. And it helps that mono-runs that aren’t just about Pokemon type are very common and popular in the Pokemon fan space, so an in-universe character who exclusively uses frogs felt like both a realistic thing to happen, and I felt it would be a nice nod to that type of run in Pokemon circles. Ribbert’s sidequest will be available as soon as you get to Blackview, so feel free to drop by and do his froggy bidding when Ep7 comes out! Ah, by the way… I’m not a big fan of introducing a named character just for one sidequest. While I like expanding and fleshing out the world, I also like using those fleshed out elements more than once to at least keep it from feeling like there’s too much going on all at once and also tying things together a bit neater. So… This Tadbulb quest isn’t the last you’ll see of Ribbert, I’m sure. (And here, some additional memes, as a treat…) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ribbert, Frogs, and even some memes, Mags really gave us the goods for this. Hope this has got you excited for the new sidequest content coming to EP7. One of the reasons behind picking up a new Eventer for the team was so we can deliver on some new sidequest content, and with my time being a bit more limited than it once was, this was an area I really want to not fall behind while I focus on the rest of the project. We have been discussing some really cool ideas and concepts for sidequests, and Mags really played a part in providing some creative direction for these. Now let me pass it over to Wire, for a brief look into a major update coming to our shops. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello, I'm super excited to join Desolation's dev team! Ironic, considering I hadn't finished Desolation when I joined - E6 is unstable on Mac, so I only got most of the way through before getting too frustrated. That's been rectified, of course! I'll be acting as a general scripts developer, helping out with whatever is needed. I've also got some features of my own that have been introduced - for example, from my rejuvenation modpack, Complex Shops! All shops have been changed to use this system. This system was originally created in my modpack for Rejuvenation's Cairo, who sells things in bulk as well as for different currencies. It allows us to make any such shop interfaces, including in the future, all navigated similarly, and with far less effort on the development side. No more long menus for buying evolution stones, Pokemon, or TMs... No more trying to remember which TMs you bought... it's all just regular shop interfaces now! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Short and sweet, sometimes that’s the best way to go about it. You don’t know how much I have been hoping for something like this for our Credit Shops, comparing what we originally had, this is a night and day difference. No longer will you have to double check the amount of credits you have in your bag as they now appear while you’re browsing the shop. And to even show the Pocket Monsters there as well, chefs kiss. This is just one of the many things Wire has been already working on and optimising for the game, which alongside Yumil, have been crushing it with the scripts. There will be more to come in terms of optimisations… and maybe new passwords? Got to wait to find out! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As we proceed with development and through 2026, I’m going to be looking to drop some more EP7 story teasers as a little taster for what you can look to expect once we finally get round to being ready to release. Here, I offer you all some crumbs :) There’s a lot more I would like to do/experiment with Desolation as we progress forward with development, ways we can look to expand upon and develop our story telling to allow you, the player, to feel more immersed with the story. This comes from playing through some other fangames (Rejuvenation) and giving me a ton of inspiration about how we can improve our storytelling, especially without Caz at the helm. I will continue to keep you all updated on development. Desolation’s development team has really undergone a lot of change over the last 4 months, and I’m excited to continue to share more of all the amazing work they have been producing! And with that, I’ll see you all next time. Posty (and Ruby...)

Hi all! Surprised to see me here instead of The Postman™, huh? Well he’s slid this devblog over to me to talk about a certain something mentioned before. Besides that, Caz still isn’t around, but that’s alright. At least in the art department there isn’t anything to worry about since he almost always let me do whatever I thought looked nice LMAO But firstly, how’re you all doing? We’ve mentioned to the moon and back how we’ve been busy with this and that, but I recently graduated and got my Bachelors degree! As of posting this I still have a month left in my internship, but it’s pretty smooth sailing now lol. Besides life, I’ve actually been doing a ton of work for Deso on the side. And I mean, a ton. Unfortunately, most of which I can’t really show due to spoilers, but today, we’ll be talking about… Kanzen Temple Ya girl has started mapping. Be afraid. Jokes aside, in EP6 I was just starting to learn how to map properly. It was mostly indoor rooms and just some reskins of older tiles to get the hang of it. Kanzen Temple has been entirely my baby, as are a few other Large areas of EP7. To give a small progress update on my side of map things, for example, I finished the Kanzen Temple map, as well as Astraciel Town, another area you will be exploring in EP7! and I’m currently working on another bigger area that’s around half done~ That’s not even to mention all the non-map stuff that’s being worked on! There’s so much stuff done now that I’m starting to run out of things to do. help So don’t worry, progress is still being made! Dev blogs are kinda inconsistent lately due to the spoilery nature of everything right now, so we’re trying okie As long as I’m alive on this planet, Deso will continue until the end >:) But moving on, let’s actually show you something lmao I hope the trees didn’t spook you! The layout in the Kanzen Temple area is fairly straightforward hehe. The main entrance of the Temple is what greets you at the top of the mountain. Pretty scenic, huh? A courtyard! Though it’s looking mad empty right now since we haven’t put NPC’s down yet ^^; An exit leading to further up. Kanzen Temple is a major tourist destination in Arcanius, so it’s a bit more than just a Temple now. And here’s one of the indoor areas. This isn’t the Temple, but one of the buildings surrounding the area. Currently devoid of any life besides one of our protagonists I had a lot of fun working on this area! It’s a place with a Temple (woah shocker), so I tried to keep the vibes serene and breezy. I also kept the palette warm and comfortable with the soft pastels, so I hope you enjoy exploring the area! It was reference image hell while working on this tho, but what’s an artist without references and hell haha. Even though I’ve been doing a lot of mapping lately, I’m still at baby level lol. There’s still some minor adjustments I’ll make to the maps later on down the line, but you get the jist of it! Whenever EP7 comes out, I hope you enjoy all the new things I and the team have worked on! <3 Since I’m feeling particularly Silly today, I’ll end my segment off with the silhouette of a new character you’ll meet in EP7~ Filing the Cabinet: Season 2 If you’ve read the past dev blog, you probably already know what this means. A while ago we commissioned some art of our custom megas for Desolation (because i’m not a fan of drawing pokémon. what am I doing here. anyway,) aGoodCabinet has nailed the Sugimori style for his pokémon art and we were familiar with him being in the fangame spaces, so it was a no brainer. He was open to it, too! So here’s more official art of one of our custom megas! Thanks to aGoodCabinet for taking on these commissions for us! Speaking of his comms, they’re still open, so feel free to check out his socials! Twitter Instagram Ko-fi ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Now onto our final segment for today! We take a turn to go from Kanzen Temple alllll the way down to Keneph Beach, where our musician is taking a little break and breaking out the tunes for the area as well! He also has some words about it~ Descend from the Mountain Hey Guys! Darius here, I had a lot of fun writing this theme! Keneph Beach is a super relaxing location in Deso where every player gets to see its transformation from the wastelands of the opening scenes to the new Resort! This theme took a lot of back and forth with the team before we got it sounding the way we like, and it takes a lot from Jazz harmony especially, surprisingly, gospel choir. Hope you enjoy! Kenneph_Beach_Snippit.mp3 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ That sure does sound like a lovely stroll down the beach, doesn’t it? Makes me want to go outside and touch some grass………………..…… moving on! Darius has been going crazy lately with all the themes he’s churning out for us! Looking forward to what you all think of the custom soundtracks he’s made for EP7! Since they’re… haha… music to my ears >:) Idk what to call this closing segment so it’ll be called this instead of anything good As said in our previous development blog, we mentioned our Patreon being down. We are looking into bringing it back soon enough, so keep an eye out for an announcement regarding that. It’s been a tricky situation, especially without the man himself… We’ve had occasional contact with him here and there so I hope… I hope!!!!!! he’ll come back to continue working on this with us eventually! I miss him :( But we have to make do with whatever situation we’ve been dealt. Thanks for sticking around with us so far! Ruby