EPISODE 6 DEVELOPMENT BLOG

[Caz 938]

To keep you guys updated in the clearest way possible, I thought I should make this a thing. I'll throw a big thank you to the GOAT devs Jan and Ame for this groundbreaking graphic.

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Pokemon Desolation Episode 6 Development Progress

 

Old Content

#################### | Map Updates (20%)

#################### | Script Updates (10%)

#################### | Misc (5%)

--------------------------------------------------

#################### | Total (8%)

 

New Content: 

#################### | Story (5%)

#################### | Mapping (20%)

#################### | Scripting (5%)

#################### | Sidequests (5%)

--------------------------------------------------

#################### | Total (?? math hard%)

 

_________________________________________________________________

 

Yeah, there's a lot of grey, but we'll get there one day

 

This thread will be locked (in order for all of my posts to be easily accessible), but don't worry, I will provide updates when I have things to report, that is, a few days after posting to Patreon. Development of Episode 6 should be a great time, especially now that Ruby, Posty and I have really got the gears turning in terms of efficiency. I'm excited to see what we will bring to the table, and I'm excited at the prospect of really stepping things up, especially with the feedback that I have received. I'm honestly stoked to see how well Desolation was received by the community, despite it's multi-year absence.

 

We'll be in touch!

 

Caz

[Caz 938]

Hi! I thought I'd give a quick update now that things are starting to tone down a bit. This post will cover some finer points around Patreon, as well as just giving y'all a general update on stuff. This'll be the last update for a while, but it's a good point to just check in regardless.

 

- Patreon -

 

I thought that I would start by discussing my Patreon. This is a really important topic to me, and I'll be discussing why I've started one, why I need it and what its exact purpose is. I will keep this explanation brief, and to the point. It'll be a good ol' heart to heart. After that, you won't hear about it again o7. If you'd rather not hear about it at all, you can just skip the following section.

 

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So, Caz, why do you need one? 

There's basically two reasons Episode 5 took three years, homies. Time and money. Rent prices in NZ are sky-high, especially where I live, so I work a couple of jobs to keep up with that. That'd be fine, but the medical degree I'm doing is also incredibly time-consuming (unfortunately Posty and Ruby can attest to my irritatingly frequent absences), leaving very little to often no time for my project. I get it, everyone works hard, and has their own struggles. This is true, and for this reason I only ask for Patreon support from those who are truly able to support this project without causing any problem for themselves.

 

What's the plan? Do you even have a goal? 

Yes, I have a very specific goal with Patreon. My ideal situation would be to make just enough to drop one of my jobs, and to inject those hours (from otherwise working) into grinding out this project. This would speed up the development process dramatically, and allow me to put more time into crafting a product that I could be genuinely proud of.

 

Closing thoughts

In an ideal world, I wouldn't require Patreon. Unfortunately, it's not really an ideal world for me at the moment. That being said, I actually believe that Patreon, if utilised correctly (using the tiers), should be pretty fun for everyone involved. It's also where you can join my Discord and hang out with the team aww damn. In conclusion, Patreon is an avenue that allows me to work on my game as much as I want to, which is far more than I am currently. I cherish working on the game, and I would love to spend more time doing so. For that reason, I see Patreon as a means to largely improve upon this project.

 

I'm glad to have got that off my chest. I'll shut up now, don't worry! Love y'all <33

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Anyway... moving on!

 

 

 

Intermission wholesome boi from Ruby

 

- Aftermath, and looking forward! -

It's been just over a week since we dropped Episode 5 and boy, it has been wild. It's been so great to see the community's reaction to the new art polish, the balancing, and the story that I worked so hard on. 

 

Before I released Episode 5, there were a large number of things that I worried about - did we live up to expectations? Could I continue the story in a way that I was actually happy with while respecting the characters that I had already created? Did Desolation still have a community that would hold it up after it re-launched? Despite the issues that Desolation launched with, I'm pleased to say that things went pretty well.

 

So then, where to from here?

 

I just started a new medical run at the hospital that I'm studying in, and time has already started to run away from me again. The hours at my (less desired) jobs have increased as well, following New Zealand basically returning to normal. This time, at least, I've put a lot of thought into how I can keep Desolation moving forward (at a reasonable pace too!) without wearing myself out, and I'm excited to see how that turns out.

 

To be fair, I don't have much else to tell you guys at the moment - except to watch this space. I'm looking to make some big changes with Desolation in the near future, especially with the help of some friends in the community who have really broadened my outlook on what can be done (mechanically) with a fan game like this.

 

As time goes by, I'll be certain to keep you guys updated when there are interesting things to report. For now, I'll keep a pin on things, but I'm incredibly happy with the future story of Desolation.

 

Thanks again for your support, it really means a lot!

 

Cheers,

Caz

[Caz 938]

~ Snippet from Patreon

 

... it's about the friends we made along the way!

 

Hi guys! Just a quick update today. I've finished up with the final bits of writing for Episode 6, and I've very happy with how it's turned it. There's still some side quest stories that I want to iron out, but following that and we'll be starting to chop through things at a faster pace.

I wanted to dedicate this post to showing off some of the work that Posty and Ruby have been doing, and illustrating how much their role has expanded since they jumped on this rickety wagon.

 

Firstly, Ruby is now playing a much larger role in the design elements of the environment, with Cellia East being our first look at Ruby's work in turning a city map into a fun, engaging, and unique experience.

Here is a small spoiler-free showcase of some of the pieces she has been working on.

 

Ruby's created some over cool things that I'd love to show off, but we're keeping that stuff hidden for now!

I want to give Posty a shoutout here as well! When he first joined on he was solely involved in balancing teams, but his role has expanded quite a bit since then. He's been doing quite a bit of mapping, and his recent maps, in particular, have been awesome! Here's a snippet of the kind of stuff he's been up to in the Dreamscape, which we're greatly expanding upon in Episode 6.

 

I'm really looking forward to all of you checking out what we have in store for the Dreamscape! I've got quite a bit planned for this area in Episode 6. Taking the feedback from Episode 5 into account, I really do feel like this will be a staple of the game in the future.

Anyway, this is it for now. Cheers for the ongoing support guys! I've been really busy with medical school lately, but things are coming along quite nicely. I'm still alive, I guess.

'Till next time, homies.

Caz
 

[Posty 279]

~The Chaotic City of Nightmares~

 

Hey everyone! It's me this time, your local Postman! I wanted to make this blog post to talk about a certain area within the game that many players have struggled with.. and by struggled I mean getting lost in the vast lands known as Blackview City. 

 

A number of you have given feedback/complaints about how hard it is to navigate through the city, from searching for the crazy girl Emily to figuring out where the hell the Jinx Grid Teleporter is trust me it also took me a while to figure out where that was lol. So I took it upon myself to polish up the city. 

 

So firstly, to showcase the changes and my thoughts into going about this, here's a map of Old Blackview:

 

Spoiler

I'm gonna keep them in spoiler tags because well, Blackview is massive and I don't want to flood this post lol. 

 

Anyways as you can see, the main issue with Blackview was that, well the layout was extremely clunky with paths leading to dead ends to a lot of clutter around the centre, its no wonder people got lost around here. The city is suppose to have this chaotic nature about it which is why when I looked to give it a the polish up, I wanted to keep this feel about it! This was a bit of a challenge but after discussing with the team, this is what I came up with as a concept:

 

Spoiler

I wanted to divide Blackview into 4 "main streets" with alley ways going in-between, this way it would help to keep this feel of a chaotic city which was our vision, while helping to tackle the issue players have been struggling with.

 

And for the big polished up reveal.. this is what Blackview looks like now: 

Spoiler

its probably best to just, open both images in tabs and clicking between to have a better view of the before and after pics. This polish up took a bit of time to sort out, considering I didn't want to start from scratch with the map, due to overall eventing and the map itself was fine, it just needed a little 2020 polish up since this map is well.. 4 years old now?

 

To conclude, this isn't the complete final design, we are looking to potentially implement something else to help navigation around Blackview.

 

Other than that, development is going at a reasonable pace, I've just finished up a set of maps for Episode 6 and looking to start the next set soon

 

Speaking about development, Caz has updated his Patreon with some spicy Episode 6 content! I'll shove the link to it below, but if you wanna have a more in-depth view on our development for Episode 6, consider pledging to him! all the support everyone gives us helps massively! whether it be pledging to just leaving comments about their enjoyment with the game.

 

https://www.patreon.com/posts/41016883

 

Anyways that's it from me, hope you all have a great weekend and we'll talk again soon~

 

Posty

[Posty 279]

~A Fiery Passion~

Howdy folks! Its me once again giving you a good ole Desolation update! So lets just jump right into it shall we?

 

So September has been a bit of a hard hill to climb over, from personal reasons to just the world going even more into the gutter. I did turn 21 this month so that's something atleast ahahahahah good lord I'm old. To put it bluntly, we just as a team haven't been terribly motivated to work on Deso/we have been busy with other stuff, Ruby has been working hard on zine work and other artistic practices, Caz is currently on an intense surgery run and myself, well besides trying to get them dubs in Fall Guys and framing someone to be the imposter (it worked several times, sorry Ceri), I've just had my focuses on other situations, also uni has just started up today, so I've been preparing for that. This month has just been more difficult than we anticipated but we are getting there! This doesn't mean we haven't been working on Desolation, no far from it! Just development has been a bit slower than we hoped, but we are progressing! Anyways life update DONE, time for the gamer talk.

 

So this month, I've taken it upon myself to work on some hot areas in the game, some areas which you will get access to in EP6! so here have some hot content 

 

 

I wonder where on earth this could possibly be  maybe you can figure it out~ I won't be saying anything.

 

 

oh dear fucking god don't tell me its another one of these puzzles, how could you do such a thing?!?!

 

 

So as you can see.. some very HOT areas will be available for exploration in EP6! why have I made these? what will we be able to discover here?? is this leading to nothing and you just want us to suffer??

who knows... well I know cause I made the maps.. and the team knows as well cause they also work on the game... you get the point!

 

Maps aside, I've debated potentially making a community survey to determine which important battles that were in EP5 should be changed around, buffed, nerfed, etc you get the idea, that'll most likely be coming in a few weeks so look out for that! the feedback from that survey will really help me when re-balancing these teams, and don't worry, we are working on fields as well, so expect a field manual next EP as well as some revamped content!

 

Thats about it for this dev update, Caz has once again dropped a Patreon post which is showcasing a really spicy area available in EP6 and holy fuck I can't wait to release this to the public! so if you want the more indepth scoop of our development, considering pledging to his Patreon! On top of that, we are closing in to our pledge goal which would mean we'll look into doing development streams! so if you're interested, do consider it! https://www.patreon.com/posts/42103055 shameless plug over

 

That's all I have for you all today! Thank you for the continuous support! Stay safe and wear a mask out there :]

 

Cheers~

 

Posty 

[Caz 938]

~ Excerpts from Patreon ~

 

~How much neon do we need? How about... an entire city!~

 

Oh, hey. It's certainly been a while - sorry about that.

 

Anyway, yup, we darn did it. After some careful deliberation, we decided to go completely bonkers and make a district entirely neon... In concept, I knew getting the feeling and atmosphere for Cellia East right would be very difficult, but after an awful amount of time, and several changes to its theme, I'm pretty satisfied with the result.

 

Without further ado, here's what I've come up with ~

 

 

Yeah, we've got purple lights. Why? Because normal lights don't do justice for the never-ending party in Cellia East. Boy, am I excited to bring this place to life.

 

 

Ah yes, the one partygoer in Cellia East. Okay, truth be told - it doesn't look exactly riveting at the moment. I've got to get round to fully populating Cellia East and giving NPC's a meaningful story in this small neon microcosm.  I really want to create this perfect little part of the game where every nook and cranny feels like a joy to explore, and for each part to feel like it has a story to tell.

 

 

Despite Cellia East being party-central, I thought it'd be nice to add some greenery to one of the city districts for once. It's a nice change of pace.

 

Anyway, there's still much to be done with East. I'm really happy with how progress is coming along, and I'm excited for all of you to play through what I have in store in the future. Posty's work on mapping (with our existing tile sets), as well as Ruby's work on characters and new, complex tiles really lets me focus on systematically building an experience that I'm truly proud of. I'm finding myself spending much more time on details, and perfecting each little part that I work on. It's really fun, and I haven't had this much of a blast developing stuff in a while.

 

That's all from me. We've got some cool new things cooking outside of Cellia East... and in due course, we'll reveal all. All I can say is that the creativity from the team is really starting to shine through!

 

 

Thanks again for the support!

 

Caz

 

[Posty 279]

~Time for Reflection~

Hey y'all! hope you are all doing well!

 

Today ain't really an update of sorts. Its more of a "its time to ask the community on what they think about our game" kinda update, and what kind of feedback am I looking for... Battles.

 

Yes battles, you know the part which helps contributes to the "Pokemon" aspect of the game? If you haven't noticed (well if you have played the game, idk how you haven't), all the important battles in the game have had an overall revamp in EP5, courtesy of me (and a few others who I asked for opinions from, you know who you are, shoutout to you lot). When I came onto the development team for Desolation, my main job was to well, improve the overall gameplay of the game, aka improve the balance since there were some wild battles back in EP4 which got hit with the NERF HAMMER.. well I thought they did ahaha..... oh how ole and naive 2019 Posty was. 

 

It's apparent that the game still suffers from balance at certain points cough Garret was a walk in the park cough and I am to blame. So this is where you! yes you reading this post right this second on a Monday Afternoon after you've had your third coffee of the day trying to get through your daily routine, come in. Linked below is a Google Form with questions that lists all the major battles as of EP5 and gives you three options to choose from, "Buff, Nerf or Leave". For those who don't understand these terms, "Buff" means making the battle more difficult! if you felt like this battle was a push over and could be a bit harder, tick this! "Nerf" means the exact opposite, if you felt the battle was WAAAAY too hard for this specific point in the game, tick this! and finally "Leave", well this one is obvious but if you felt the battle was completely fine, just tick this box. Please do take in account the point in the game these battles take place when answering, Pokemon Availability, Level Caps, etc. 

>>Warning: Form contains EP5 Spoilers<<

>>>https://forms.gle/tJD7dmMVURE9HnLt9<<<

 

This feedback will be very beneficial for me to overall pinpoint which battles I should focus on when adjusting balance for EP6, with the addition of Generation 8 as well, of course teams will be adjusted regardless, but just knowing which battles I should prioritise will help to develop an overall enhanced gameplay experience.

 

I will be closing the form on Sunday 18th October at 11pm BST so please get your responses in before that time!

 

Cheers y'all for taking your time to read and fill in the form! also continue submitting shinies, i'm enjoying a lot of the recent ones coming in

 

Til next time~

 

Posty

[Ruby Red 380]

~New Faces~

 

Hi all! aaa this is my first dev blog post!! I'm excited and nervous lol.

 

Firstly, thank you for your patience with us! We've all had an incredibly busy few months apart from Deso, and we've now got a good steady workflow! Exciting!

 

You all know me as the sole arts person for the team, and it was fine for the last episode, with the character overhaul and all. Now we're revamping a lot of old areas, and updating/adding more to the tilesets, which ups my work by... a lot lol.

But luckily, we've got ourselves a new member in the team! She'll be helping out with making new tiles, and giving a polish up to the older ones, so I can focus more on the character art amongst other character sprites (and a few tiles here and there!) Her being around has already proved to be incredibly helpful, and she's super speedy with her work!

 

You've surely seen her around, but everyone give a warm welcome to @crimsoncrim!! Go give her love for being absolutely incredible! ;v;

 

Other than that, I've added the art for the protagonists- wait- who are these two...?

 

 

And they're included with the protagonists!? That must mean...

 

Yes! We've got two new protagonists for Desolation! (aha new faces get it?) Check them out alongside the other protagonists in the Art Gallery! You'll also be able to download their sprites for the game, and get icons of them!

 

Last thing!! Since Crim is a new addition to our team, we'll be reopening the dev Q&A!!

 

Thanks for taking the time to read this, I hope it was at least a little entertaining~

 

Take care, and until next time!

 

Ruby

[Posty 279]

~Who's your Favourite Character?~

 

Hiya everyone! Today I do not have any latest development stuff (if you want extra content follow the patreon :']). However we do have something else! 

 

Similar to what Rejuvenation did a while back, we have decided to do a poll to see who is Desolation's most beloved character! Why are we doing this you ask? well the main reason is well.. a secret :) which you all will find out about in due course, what could it possibly be? who knows! well we do on the Desolation Team ahahah..

 

Another reason why is well, we are just genuinely curious on who everyone's favourite character is? Is it the Hothead Connor? Maybe the Mysterious Lilith? ..Amelia? Or is it gar bea,, i mean Garret. Linked below is the Poll, click on it, choose your favourite character and submit! that simple

>>>https://forms.gle/yYnw38PZB3qq56uz9<<<

 

The poll is set to end on >>January 1st 2021<< so please get your votes in before time runs out!

 

Take care of yourselves!

 

Posty

[Caz 938]

~ Excerpts from Patreon ~

 

~ A trip to the beach... ~

 

Just a short update today. While I continue to work on the sprawling, spoiler-ridden beast that is Cellia East, I offer you a brief respite to... the beach?

 

I would say that it's the perfect time of year to hit the beach (it's summer where I am) but I suppose that's not super applicable to everyone, especially with lockdowns, so I'll just get on with it...

There's more than one reason we're suddenly interested in beaches. With Episode 5, we aimed to polish the game bit by bit - to improve small elements of every nook and cranny. In Episode 6 - we're remaking entire chunks of the game. This overhaul starts with... well, the start.

 

I'm sure most people think that the introduction to this game is pretty dated, and you'd be right - so we're starting things out by completely remaking the introduction - both writing-wise and graphically. Here's a sneak peek.

 

 

Yup - a much more modern layout, with more colourful, flashy tiles - it's a WIP, but it's certainly getting there. Obviously, this is where I give a huge shoutout to our recent addition, crimsoncrim, who has been taking an enormous role in creating fresh, vibrant tiles for the game, and we're super grateful to have her on board. Bear in mind that this is just one map - we've got a lot more to offer (starting with a certain cruise ship), so we'll keep you posted.

That being said, we're not completely stuck in the past. The tiles that Crim has been working on also pioneer future areas of significance in Episode 6. Here's a little sample of some new tiles that we've been playing with for a new area:

 

 

Crim's been on fire lately, for sure. We hope she's got sunscreen, with all the time she's spent on the beach.

 

Anyway, that's all for now. I'll be sure to send y'all more stuff when it's available. Until then, take care.

 

Caz