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I don't have a witty joke to make here for this dev blog aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa it's the last one, too. As of typing this i only have a few events left to do (Note, they are all long and complicated and I may not get it right on the first try) But what have I been cooking? Well, a lot! Renegade has been complete. Like, fully. Maybe some battles need tinkering here and there, but all cutscenes have been made, all events have been done. I may go back and add a few easter eggs, item placements etc. But yeah! After Renegade, I needed a BREAK from main story stuff. A lot of the events in Renegade were very intensive on me to make. Not really from a story/mood perspective, but from an actual development side. I really pushed the limits of what I could do in Renegade. But as a result I did get burned out a little. I mean, if you see what I cooked, you'll understand! Really wanted to drop it around Christmas time as a present, but I'd rather get it right on the first try rather than try to fulfill some funny date dream. ======================= New Early Game Content: I said there would be no side content for v14, and that's kinda not true anymore. I mean, there are a few sidequests DURING v14, and are time sensitive to that, and by a few I think literally just 1 lol. But thats a lore sidequest-- I'm getting off topic. Anyways, this is to say that I actually did a few new events in the early game because Gen 9 kinda forced me to. Game is huge, but all the encounters are very tight. First off, there are new missions in East Gearen (Minor, non help center ones) Past Regrets: The week after I finished Renegade, I was desperateeeee to get out of v14 content, so I went back to the past and came to a conclusion. Man. These maps are really held back by my decision to keep them gen 3. I think the game really shines best when I put my own spin on things. And no, before you get worried. I did not remake all of the past (again). I did give it a texture update, though! For those confused by that, I simply mean that the maps are the same, I just made custom tiles instead of using default R/S/E tiles. This includes battle backgrounds as well. A comparison of Kugearen City: Skip Skip Skip!: There are other few things I have cooked, but I'm can't give away every surprise right? Okay, that beeing said. This is most likely going to be the final dev update before v14 releases. It will not drop this year. So do not expect that. But I estimate testing will begin sometime in December if I'm lucky. Again, no promises. Also no promises on how long testing will take. It will just take as long as it needs. It's a BIG chonky version. This game is a behemoth. But it is made for crazy people like me. I bid you adieu, with one final screenshot

This post has been sponsored and narrated to you by sad bear i found on etsy (if this is ai ill kermit) please listen to this song and be sad as you read So it's been 5 months. Hey... How are you? Good? No? Sorry. Progress: Paragon: Part 1: 100% (Tested) Part 2: 90% (Untested) Part 3: 95% (Untested) Renegade Part 1: 100% (Untested) Part 2: 95% (Untested) Part 3: 85% (Untested) I took a big break during May, and a few days off in June. I needed it. Part 1 in each route are done! Part 1 (Renegade) needs testing, but I'll do that later. Part 2 of Paragon has a big segment that needs a lot of work. Likely will be done last. Part 2 of Renegade is basically complete, I just need to create a cutscene with the two M's Part 3 of Paragon is nearly complete. I have one last segment, but it's the hardest one. Part 3 of Renegade needs its last segment done as well, but I did so much work in one small time period that I need to do something else. I've been focusing a lot on Renegade recently because I got that Ren(egade) in me. Let's talk about it. Introducing THE WONDER TOWER I mentioned a long time ago that a lot of the events of Paragon's Karma files -still- happen in Renegade. The player just isn't there to take part in them. Most notably, some interesting things with Alice (Again) But this time it's a bit different... Alice has created a special dimension called The Wonder Tower. What is the Wonder Tower? - THE WONDER TOWER, is a 3 zone mini rogue like. The player will enter the tower and be cursed by the Queen who rules it all. Angelica! Also, it's ANGELICA'S WONDER TOWER. You've been stripped of your Pokemon, but fear not, there are Pokemon available to you inside THE WONDER TOWER! Also! The Pokemon you get here are yours to keep! They're received at random, though. Each time you lose, your experience will get a bit easier. I tested this area out with some of my dev members and the reception was really good. Review: "It was really fun" - Jan 10/10 starly. Renegade exclusive btw. To sum it up: 3 Zones 3 Bosses 3 ??? Encounters 2 Locked up Teammates ummm what else. oh yes. playable m2 segment us renegaders really won with this post... go us. In other misc news... Two icons from emo village got an emo upgrade (no) rad... zumi also posted this preview what's with all the emos... also... did u know... renegade and paragon are both having "xen raids"... but each are getting their own unique areas ? like... in renegade you cant go to paragon's maps and vice versa... Why did I do this... Well... it's becaus e i love you. That's all I really have to say... I'm still shooting for a release this year... but if its not perfect why bother.... oh and one last image for everyone!! Yay!

Hello hello! Posty here delivering you the latest instalment of Desolation Development™. It’s been a while folks and I hope you all are doing well! And not suffering too much with this heat (if you’re from the UK, you know how the weather has been lately), before I jump into this beast of a blog that I have lined up for you all, I just want to once again say thank you. The reception we received following the news of Caz’ Departure was overwhelming with love and support for myself and the rest of the team to continue carrying the torch he passed onto us. We are excited for what’s to come, and this post will showcase the changes we have been working on to improve the Deso experience, but first one last little announcement. From one departure to another, Crim has decided to leave the team. Crim joined us during early EP6 development once we decided it was about time to expand from our original 3 man band. They provided a ton of useful insight and produced some stunning work which has left an impactful mark on the game. We are forever grateful for the time and effort they put into the project and wanted to thank Crim for everything. We wish them all the best for their future endeavours! And with that, let’s move into what this post is all about… Gameplay. This blog is going to be… long, juicy! But long. So I will be splitting this into individual sections with spoiler tags, so feel free to read all of it, the sections you are most interested in, or just skip to the end and say “first” down below in the comments. Anyways, we have a lot to cover so buckle up folks, so let’s get into it shall we? Gen 9 Mega Evolution Changes Overlays Boss Mechanics Field Updates Ability Boxes Drinking at Drifblim Drinkery --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, that was a lot of information huh? I hope these last two posts were interesting reads for you battle folk out there. We have a lot of cool updates coming to EP7, from optimisations to further gameplay balances, Desolation continues to improve with each version. We have a lot of exciting content to come and I really do look forward to sharing more with you all! Now before I wrap up this post, I have a few extra details to go over. Patreon Updates A few updates have been made as of this post going live to our Patreon tiers. For starters, I want to make an announcement regarding our Crown Tier. As you know, this was removed due to Caz’ absence. Now that he has taken a step back from development, what will happen to this tier? After a discussion with Ruby, we have decided to not bring back the Crown Tier during EP7’s development, instead we will look to bring it back once we begin work on EP8. The reason for this is due to the length of EP7 development already, adding additional workload to what is already a monstrous amount of work developing the story would only continue to delay the game coming out. I want to be able to develop side quests that our Patrons have requested to a high standard and not half ass them. So this will be something I would look to reopen once we begin EP8 development. It will function similarly as it did in the past, with only a limited amount of slots available, more information on this once we get closer to EP8’s development. Furthermore, we have adjusted the wording for our Stargazer and Rose tiers to make it a bit clearer about what you are allowed to ask for as part of your perks, the changes are as follows: Stargazer Submit your name to be an NPC in the current version of the game! Rose At this tier, you can choose some attributes for your named NPC (Class from a list, Max Team of 5, and if you would like them to appear in the Keneph Resort Fight Club) Keneph Resort Fight Club? Yes, I will reveal this now as a part of this blog, Keneph Resort will be the host of a new Fight Club. We will go more into details about this in a future update, but for now that’s all you’re getting! Anyways, hopefully these clarifications make sense, I have compiled a list of Trainer Classes you will be able to pick from, in which we have now added new ones that will be appearing in EP7! Development Blogs This one will be kept short, but starting from the post in June, we will reduce the number of development blogs from once a month to one every 2-3 months. The reason behind this is to prioritise bigger and more informative posts, similar but not the extra length to this post. I want these posts moving forward to really showcase what’s to come in EP7, while also really focusing on development without having to rush about “what to put out this month”. This will allow me to think more in advance about what I would like to include for our blogs, and spend more time writing them up. I may start dropping some teasers here and there on our Twitter or in the Reborn server, so keep an eye out! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Woah boy this was a long post… I had to split this up into two individual Patreon posts as it was so long, but thought I would just chuck it all into one for the development blog. Anyways, I hope this has got you a bit excited for what’s to come, especially for the battle enthusiasts out there! And with that, I bid you adieu, until the next one folks! Posty

How is it already August… Hey everyone! Posty here, with a new post coming straight to your post-box. This month's update will go over some visual updates that we have made to some of our characters, featuring some fresh new drip and a little bit of plastic surgery, a little treat for you all from the music men, and a new character joins the Desolation cast? This time around, you will be hearing from the team and not just me! So let’s get into it, Ruby will now take over and go through the graphical updates she has been making to the game. Ruby’s Plastic Surgery Clinic Hiiii it’s me Ruby, and as the title above states I’ve once again reopened the doors of my plastic surgery clinic. Truth be told I have no clue why I held off so long to do this, but whatever, it’s done finally. Here’s the redesigns of both Aderyn and Aaron! Someone’s gonna have to stop me from giving everyone long coats. Even if someone tried to stop me, they’ll find I’m an immovable force. Alas… I tried to keep most of their physical appearances intact from the original. I already liked Aderyn so she faced minimal bodily changes besides her outfit. Aaron, however, got sent to the barber lol. Unfortunately I’m not a fan of the type of hair from his old sprite, so I changed it up to something still similar but more to what I find looks better haha. You’ll find I base my design principles half off of vibes and half off of actual studies haha. For the thought process, I tried to give Aderyn a ranger look (that wasn’t just the X/Y ranger lmao,) that I thought also fit the actual rangers aesthetic present in the game. For Aaron, I tried to lean more into him being the Director of Cellia North, his arguably more important job in the grand scheme of things, haha. These sprites are still subject to change, so there’s a chance for there to be some differences in the end product. As a signoff, these two aren’t the only ones who went under my knife~ There’s one more existing character I’ve taken for a haircut and shopping, so have fun with that info until I inevitably decide to spill who it is hehe. Catch you whenever I have fun, non-spoily stuff to show~ - Ruby Oh no. We have to update the ron emotes now….. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ What do you think about the drip? Ruby has been smashing it out of the park with all the graphic updates she has been making to the game, and with Omens working alongside her in the artist department, Desolation is looking pretty sick Now I’m going to pass over to our musicians, Darius and Rust, who have something in store for you all! Darust’s Music Corner Welcome to Kanzen Cliffs -- a new, explorable area on Arcanius Island after traversing through Chryseum Canyon! Because of this area's relevance to the main story, I wanted to be very particular in how the track was written. Rust and I actually went through three different iterations of the track before we finally settled on this one, and I am super proud of the work that went into it! Please let us know what you think either on this blog or in our channel on the Reborn Evo server! We're always looking to improve player experience :) The composition is written for string orchestra with flute, french horn, vibraphone, and piano taking turns with the melody. Usually when composing, I come up with the melodies first and then work out the harmony, but in writing this piece, I'd actually had the chord progression in my drafts since Episode 6, just waiting for the right opportunity to use it. My goal with this piece thematically was to separate two very distinct areas with strong personalities (Chryseum Canyon and Kanzen Temple) with something much more serene and playful -- almost a respite from the stressful canyon's irregular meter (each major is seven beats/counts) and the unsettling temple's pulsing D minor #13 chord. (For those interested, minor chords contribute to darker feelings like anger or sadness, but adding the #13 brings an air of mystery, very common in Jazz music. I recommend listening to "So What?" - Miles Davis if you'd like to explore further) Funnily enough, I came up with this chord progression when I was experimenting with Christmas songs back in December of 2022. I was working on a reharmonization project at my university (where you have to take an existing song and change the chord progression while still keeping in sense with the melody), and developed this progression from the classic, "Let it Snow!" The resemblance is a bit obscure, but the observant ones of you may hear slight references here or there throughout the piece. That's all for the composition side of things, I'll now turn it over to Rust to tell you about the magic he casts during the production. – Dariusolation ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Oh boy, my turn! Kanzen Cliffs as far as I know is the first track I worked on as an official member of the team. There's a few where Darius asked me to do some production work, but this one was special since I was an actual team member. Kanzen was a funny one because I went in planning to try to have a cohesive sound between tracks. Give the OST its own identity if I had to describe the plan and it started with this track. When Darius passed it over to me, I initially went with my usual down-sample to DS quality and combined it with the Gen 4 and 5 instruments.... Yeah, that pass didn't really hit the spot. I then decided to go for a hybrid of higher quality samples mixed with soundfonts (though this track is actually void of Sfs). I did at least try as much as possible to pull from the same sources as the Game Freak Composers. I've now got a solid set of general sounds I can pull from now, but let's focus more on this track. While Darius did say we went through three iterations, I went through way more changes before sending a version to him that I thought might be good. So many French Horns were tested on my end to fit the feel until I remembered I had a program called Noteperformer that does an amazing job of replicating realistic playing. It hit the spot for the overall vibes of the track (get it? Because, there's a vibraphone in the track). A good portion of my work is just hearing the original base Musescore playback and trying to the best of my ability to figure out what Darius heard in his head when writing. Luckily, I seem to get close to the mark most of the time (pretty easy with this track for the strings considering he had used the BW strings, so I just used the original source!). Throw on some reverb to Darius's taste with a few effects and mixing and you get a nice track. If just hearing this track gets you excited, then I can't wait for you to hear what else Darius and I have in store for you! - Rust ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Without further ado, here’s the track! Don’t say we don’t treat you all… We dropped quite a few teasers and it’s about time we just go ahead and reveal a brand new track for EP7. I am really excited with the musical direction we are taking with Desolation, and I hope you enjoy this! How would you like your tea? As a fellow British man, I like a good ‘ol cuppa during the day. It could be anytime, in the morning while I’m hard at work, when I come home from my job, or even later in the evening when I have some bits to crack on with. But sometimes it’s nice to head down to a nice cafe, sit down and enjoy a nice cup of their finest tea, accompanied by a treat of your choice. Do you want some scones? Maybe even a slice of cake? I definitely find myself indulging in a nice cafe every now and then, when I went to Berlin recently I found myself in a few cafes (including the Hoyoverse cafe… 3 times… Don’t ask), anyways where am I going with this? You might remember from a previous update last year, I shared this screenshot of Astraciel. Amongus A Gym situated in this town full of mushrooms and wonders, but did you know it was also a cafe? Of course you didn’t, I never mentioned it to you, until now. But who is the Gym Leader? Well, let me introduce you to the newest character to the Desolation Cast! Meet Delica! Yes, she finally makes her appearance in Episode 7. You might have heard her name throughout your journey thus far, but you haven’t seen her yet, until now… Actually I think we revealed part of her outfit in an old dev blog during Episode 6’s development, so shout out to you if you recognise the drip! She acts as the Gym Leader in Astraciel, in which her Gym is situated within Astra Café. All in all, she’s a sweet girl who cares a lot for the people around her. Whether that be those she’s attending to in the cafe, or her challengers at the Gym, she will always greet you with a smile on her face, an absolute sweetie pie! How will she be able to assist you during your travels? You’ll have to wait to find out! Delica is a character that I’m really excited for you all to meet in game, she’s essentially Ruby’s “babygirl” and a character we’ve been sitting on since we joined the development team back in 2019. I look forward to you all getting to find out more about her story. To celebrate her reveal, here is a cute icon that you all may use! To accompany the reveal of the newest character joining the Desolation Cast, she needs a theme to go alongside her right? Anyways, here’s a snippet of Delica’s Theme :) delica_snippet.mp3 Yes we’re past the music section and you’re getting more music, wow wow! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Before I finish off this development blog, I wanted to throw it back to you all, the community. Progress is being made but with no end in sight currently, I understand that it has been rather slow as a whole, and I know a lot of you are eagerly awaiting the next update to Desolation. So while I can’t hand over EP7 to you all now, I wanted to ask if there is anything in particular you would all like to see in our next development blog? And we will look to base that post around community feedback! So ask away, drop comments on this blog or in the Deso General channel in the Reborn Evo Discord, and I will compile a selection! Til’ the next one folks Posty

Hey everyone, Posty here, so this is a bit of a different post compared to ones we normally tend to do, but we always like to be transparent with you all about the state of development and how things have been progressing. Now with that said, today’s announcement is not the news we would be hoping to share with you, but here we are. After having a discussion with Caz recently, he has decided to step down and will not be returning to Desolation Development. This is something that we had felt would happen for a while now, but we are glad that he was able to be transparent and let us know. The reasons behind his departure are in large part due to personal and heavy hitting events that happened in his life that coincided with the years of Desolation's development prior to and post release of EP6, and he informed me that these dark times have been too close with Desolation for him to find a way to separate for himself. Even if he were to come back now, he feels that the progress he has made will be undone, and the last thing we would want is to see our friend fall back deeper into the abyss he is slowly climbing out of. We wish him nothing but the best in his future endeavours and want to thank him for essentially bringing us all together. Desolation was built off his foundation and the team we have built since myself and Ruby joining during EP5 development is one I wouldn’t change for the world. He is always welcome to come back if he ever wishes to do so and feels like he is able to, and that door will never be shut on him. Now after that bit of a bombshell, what’s next moving forward for Desolation? Well firstly, we will not be going anywhere, we have been manning the ship throughout his absence and will continue to do so. As I said previously, as long as the passion is there, Desolation will continue, but there will be a few changes. Effective immediately, I will now be removing the “temp” in my title and step up as the official lead dev for Desolation. Caz originally passed the reins to me when he was stepping back, and I’ve been leading the charge since then, so it only makes sense. On top of this, Ruby will now be stepping up as my co-lead. We both joined EP5 development around the same time, and she has really stepped up her game throughout this development cycle, expanding her skillset to doing more mapping to give me a hand, we’re basically like Jessie and James and Shelly is Meowth (Shelly is her cat). Moving on, I have been planning on how the team operates currently and what we would need to improve upon in order to ramp up development. I have begun to delegate some of my current tasks to others, one thing in particular is the gameplay, this is something I initially focused on when I came on the team back in EP5 and since then I got myself involved in every other aspect, yes, this includes art, recolouring some tilesets counts! Anyways, Dred and Omens have a lot of knowledge when it comes down to team building, encounters, and even balancing forms (in this case I mean Megas), I have been working alongside them to start mapping out how the gameplay will go for EP7, however this will be something I will look to fully pass down to them. Shoutout to Omens and all the lovely documents they have prepared for me to sit down and read… Yes that last paragraph was a ramble, but that is just a little bit of an insider scoop of some of the things I’ve been planning about how we can progress. So to end this post, let’s do a quick Q&A! My favourite. Despite the few things you mentioned, what does this change for Desolation? Development wise, nothing really, it will continue the same way it has done when Caz originally stepped back. However the biggest change to note will be the story, as Caz never provided us with key points for the “inbetweens”, we will now be continuing the story in our own vision. EP7’s story was already mapped out as this was explained to us at the start of this cycle, but EP8 onwards… We have little tidbits of information, but nothing concrete of “this is how the player will progress”. I know a lot of you played Desolation for the story, and we can never replace Caz’ way of telling a story, however as a team I feel like what we have been putting together through regular meetings and writing the script, is something I’m extremely proud of. Though I would completely understand if people decided to drop the game following this news, it’s one thing to start your own story and decide how it goes, but taking over someone else's story to then continue it in your vision is a different beast, these path will all lead to the same point, but the way we arrive at that destination will differ. Will you be expanding the team again? After breaking the news to the team, I came to the realisation that we will potentially need a few more team members to keep the ball rolling. These may be internal hires from connections (like how Rust joined us) or I will make another public development blog announcing that we are hiring. I’m going to see how the team fairs with the new changes I am putting in place, and then make that decision in the near future. So keep an eye out, you might be the missing piece to the puzzle. How is development going as a whole? Considering our circumstances, I would say it has been going a lot more smoothly than it once was a year ago. The new additions to the team have really stepped up and elevated the product, and we are now getting into a rhythm for development. That being said, I completely understand that this cycle has been… slow, a lot slower than myself and the rest of the team would have liked. Dev updates following this will start to expand upon more EP7 teasers and showcasing some more of the mapping work, gameplay updates, and other little events we have been working on. I do not want to set expectations, and the game is always on my mind daily about how things are going and what needs to be done. I hope now that with this shackle that has been lifted, that we can really go head first without sitting on the worry of “is this what Caz would have wanted”. I know that I have said this a LOT throughout this cycle but from the bottom of my heart, thank you all so much for the love and support you’ve given us throughout development. We will continue to develop and produce a game we can be proud of, and hopefully deliver you a final product that was worth the wait. This is essentially a new chapter for us, and we would love for you to join us for the ride. If you have any questions or inquiries then please don’t hesitate to reach out to me! You can find me on multiple platforms, I’ll just leave a few links below:: https://x.com/posty_hd https://www.instagram.com/postycollects/ I’m most active on Discord and we’re still based on the RebornEvo server, so feel free to drop me a DM there as well if you would like, just please refrain from asking anything… weird lol. One final thing, there will not be a development blog for May. However look forward to our post in June where I will start to showcase some of the gameplay updates we have been working on :) Posty

Hi, it’s Orsan here! Just a quick post for you all this time: We’re not dead! 19.6 is currently in the works. A ton of people are cooking up a ton of amazing stuff for this update! We can’t wait for you all to see it. Every time I look in the Community Cooperation Initiative discord, something new and wacky is going on. So much is being worked on, though, that 19.6 is going to take a while. Please bear with us! A few quick announcements about some of the people who have been helping out: We have a new developer on the team! Joining us from the Community Cooperation Initiative, it’s Karvanha! If you’ve played 19.5, you’ve probably already seen some of Karvanha’s contributions, such as the multiple rows of balls in multi battles and the move descriptions in battles, to name a few! Karvanha has also made an unfathomable amount of bugfixes and put a ton of work into the Gen 9 engine implementation for modders. We’re all glad to have him on the team! Returning from the old team, also, it’s Azzie! She’s been knocking it out of the park with her contributions as well, between ████████████ and █████████████████! Oh, I can’t show those yet, can I? Well, rest assured, she’s been doing great work– one of these two features wasn’t even initially planned, she just dropped in with it and we all immediately fell in love. Over on the Community Cooperation Initiative side, we recently pulled in several artists– Apophyll has been helping us with some sprites for a secret feature for a while now, and MoonPaw, bowle, meteors, Not_Aza, and inserobite102 have been helping us create many variants of existing sprites– such as our new protag sprites! These were shared on Discord a while back, but here’s a preview for you all here! They’ve been doing a great job! AiedalEclipsed, who made the initial updater for 19.0 and manages the links for the downloads of all three games, has also been cooking up an improvement to a feature of the game that’s been there since Episode 1! It’s been a little messy for a long time, and the new improvement to it is great! Thanks, Aie! Yeah, that’s… pretty much it! We’re all working hard to make this update great, between core developers and the Community Cooperation Initiative! I probably shouldn’t leave this off without a screenshot, huh… How about this? (yeah i know i don't have the updated protag sprite, it's on a different branch and i don't feel like switching) Thanks for all of your patience and support! See you all next time!

~ Excerpts from Patreon ~ Yeehaw partners! It’s your local cowboy Posty here with your monthly installment of Desolation development update . Okay you can see the theme of this post, but I will get into that momentarily, first a little life update on my side. Firstly, I have started a new job recently (we don’t talk about what happened to the last one)! If you don’t know, I’ve been really diving into content creation and digital marketing, and that is basically my job lol. It’s been going really well so far and I find myself in a better environment than I was with my previous position. On top of that with this job set up, I have more time to dedicate to Desolation (mainly since I’m not travelling an hour there and back 5 days a week… I’m working 3 days hybrid, happy days) With that said, I’ve been focusing on my job and had other bits to do outside of development, so the last month has been just taking time to adjust from having all the free time in the world, to working a nice little 9-5. Also, I’ve started to dive into other forms of content creation as well, involving TCGs (yes I like shiny cardboard), I started an Instagram for my content so if you wish to see what I’m getting up to outside of Deso, you can check it out here! Anyways, enough about all that side of things, let's get to some Deso content shall we? So today’s post is focused around a little gaff that has spawned outta the blue. We streamed mapping this new place on a recent Patreon Stream, but for more context… Fairbale has gotten a new attraction that the locals can go to spend some time to unwind after a long day of farming, or being run outta town by the Black Foxes. An interesting sign, what’s this place called? Ah, there we go Welcome to Drifblim’s Drinkery! A nice saloon that the locals can swing by, grab a drink and take the time to relax, it’s a hard life being a farmer… or a cowboy… yeehaw. So for a little bit of backstory as to why all of a sudden Fairbale has gained a saloon, uh, yeah. Darius felt like making a track that utilised Drifblim’s cry, I told him to do it, we initially thought about this for another area, but then I said “fudge it we ball, I’m adding a saloon to Fairbale”, so yeah. These things tend to happen on the Desolation team. I have many silly ideas (or others give me silly ideas) and I make them happen… I was given too much power when I was handed over the reins for leading the project. Moving on! The saloon has been closed due to the recent Black Fox attack that took place in Fairbale, but after the cleanup crew got to work, it has now reopened and will be available from the beginning of EP7, but that begs the question, what is so special about this place? There will be a sidequest, wow more sidequests! But more importantly, you will be able to buy a few drinks here. These drinks may come with some special effects, but we will reveal that in a later update. But these effects are unique to the Drinkery, so make sure to check it out! And that’s all I have for you for this monthly instalment of yeehawsolation, I mean Desolation. Things are progressing smoothly and I’ve been getting myself into a new rhythm balancing my new job, content creation and Desolation, and I’m really excited for how things are looking! I hope that you continue to join us on this ride of the EP7 train, coming to you… at some point eventually! But since I only really showed off the Drinkery, I guess I should give you all one more little teaser as a treat, and yes this one is an EP7 story spoiler… More to come in the upcoming months, so stay tuned! Anyways, thanks for reading and I will see you next month. Take care folks! Posty

Beginning to feel festive yet? Me too. No seriously I’ve been doing Christmas stuff for work since mid October, so safe to say I’m already in the holiday spirit. Anyways hey everyone! It’s time once again for a dose of the latest in Desolation development. Before I jump into the bulk of this blog, if you couldn’t tell by the title, we’re once again recruiting for the Desolation team! Let me explain, after a discussion with Ruby, I’ve come to realise that with my now much more limited free time due to having a full time position, I need a bit more help in order to get EP7 across the finish line. As a team, over the last year there have been some changes within this cycle and our own personal lives which has ultimately slowed down progress as a whole. With this in mind, we are looking for individuals who have skills in eventing in RPGMaker. All the details will be fully explained in the application form below, if you feel like you are right for the role and want to join us, then please apply below! Applications will close in 2 weeks time on Sunday 14th December, we will then review and reach out to selected individuals via Discord. > Apply Here < The last few months have been a bit of a realisation for me, this project means a bucket loads to myself and the rest of the team, however I am just not able to dedicate as much time as I once used to when Caz was at the helm and I was… well essentially an unemployed adult who tried to keep himself busy in order to keep himself sane. We have been looking into ways to improve our processes and this is one of them. And with that said, I look forward to going through your applications! Please share it around if you know anyone who could also fit the criteria! Anyways, let’s jump into the main portion of this blog shall we? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Following our previous development blog, I opened the floor to you, the community, to ask what they would like to see us talk about, as a way to give back a bit due to the state of this development cycle. A good few people wanted to hear more about the music process that our musical duo have in place, and then there was a bit of discussion about megas… which was mainly “add this or that”, but I’m going to take that and look at it as “talk about megas!” so I will do that. But before that, a quick update from my side of things. EP7’s story is now fully mapped out. We have a few tidbits to tie up but we have now fully shaped out from start to finish. This also means that we have started looking down the pipeline into future plot points, making notes and coming together to continue the story in our vision, and I'm really happy with what we have come up with. With the main story in mind, development will look to start picking up over the next several months, and I look forward to sharing more tidbits with you all in future updates. Anyways, let me pass over to the Music Men and they can explain to you all the process behind the new track we are revealing today, Astra Cafe! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Happy Fall everyone! This Desolation duo has been asked to do a deeper dive into the digital design of Delica's delightful Astra Cafe. It's really touching to hear that people are interested in our work and we've put together a little timeline of our process as musicians while working on this track for you all to enjoy! Darius here! I always say that there is no such thing as original music. You may think something is original, but there are always references (subconscious or otherwise) to other pieces of media that influence how you compose and write music. I've been open about references in a lot of my music, but for those who don't know, Pokemon Conquest has and always will be my favorite Pokemon spinoff/game due to its story, graphics, and incredible soundtrack. Shinichiro Nakamura, the composer for that game, created 17 themes (one for each pokemon type) that marvelously capture the essence of each type, and his themes are a resource I often refer back to when I need to be reminded of how to incorporate elements of each Pokemon type into a track. After re-listening to the entire soundtrack for the 100th time, I wrote the Astra Cafe theme with specific reference to the following three themes: Event Theme 2 - This was the theme that really ironed out how I wanted to arrange Astra Cafe, starting in D minor, a brief Bb Major interlude, and a return to form before repeating. Violight Theme - I had already decided to write in a minor key and Violight's theme does some really interesting things theory-wise, from the jumping electro-synth to the bumpin' bassline. The last major of Astra Cafe is directly inspired by the last sequence of this theme. Viperia Theme - I like to kind of associate Delica with this kingdom so I used this theme to help figure out what instrumentation would sound the best for her cafe. That leads us to our first draft of the theme here, take a listen: Astra_Cafe_V0.9.mp3 You’ll notice this draft is very simple. I write little demos like this for most of my tracks because it allows Rust and the rest of the team to listen in and understand my thought process. In these initial drafts, the melody and bassline are written out in full with little to no harmony. I usually figure out certain themes at my keyboard and then record myself playing those themes. Then, I write each note out individually in MuseScore along with all other musical ornaments. Once I get the go-ahead from Posty and Ruby, it’s time to think about harmony. I already have a chord progression in mind here, but this is the stage where I make edits and experiment to see what sounds the best. That leaves us with this second draft: Astra_Cafe_V1.0.mp3 This second draft is what gets sent over to Rust so he can get to work on the mixing. In the file I send him, there are a lot of little notes that explain when to fade certain instruments in or out, where to add some percussion to fill in gaps, and what voices to prioritize so that the listener (you!) hears them more. I’ll now pass it over to him so he can give you guys a better view of his production process. Rust time! Hey there, it's Rust. By the time Darius has sent me the file you just heard, I’ve already been thinking of what plugins and samples to use that would be a good fit for what he wrote and what I think might need to be added to fill out the track. Actually, that thought process starts with whatever first version he sends, even if it's an unfinished snippet. I’ll try to explain the music and production jargon when it’s relevant as I talk here. With the MIDI file (this is just a file that contains instructions on how to play the music, it has no audio), I import that into REAPER, my DAW of choice (DAW being Digital Audio Workstation AKA software I use to put the music together). I then add my plugins to each instrument (a plugin can span from effects like adding reverb/echo to actual instruments like a piano). I actually wanna talk about my thought process for picking these sounds. I try to not choose super new sounds. There are a ton of modern plugins out there that sound amazing and realistic, but I feel there's a certain quality to picking slightly older sounds. Sampletank 4 Max V2 is very new but also not? It's got new stuff, but a nice chuck of presets there are actually old. You can find some classic pokemon sounds in there like the strings and clarinet from HGSS and BW/2. I generally try to pull from sounds that would have been available during the late DS-era of pokemon games. It's not a concrete rule, but it is there. This track actually features a lot of old sound modules from the 90s in the jv-1080 expansion cards (uhh DLC for physical hardware). O K. Back to this track. Putting sounds to the Instruments is really straightforward. Koto? Find a good koto from one of the many presets of my plugin libraries. In this case I mixed it with roland kotos and a soundfont (a file that holds sample data and instructions for playing them) from one of our composer friends who also works with Darius and I on Azure. He goes by DaforLynx, go check him out sometime. In the photo below you can see the plugin I use to play the soundfont plus a reverb effect to fill out the sound a bit more. I am what you might call a preset hero. I love searching through these plugins and finding what sounds they have. This also somewhat extends to mixing the music, but I modify the setting of those plugins to my taste. It really is mostly drag and drop here since we’ve done most of the heavy lifting already. The only thing we really added here was percussion. I remember Darius talking about the conquest OST, so I tried adding percussion to it that matched that. I honestly tried writing my own drum part, but I had a writing block for drums at that moment so I opt’ed for drum loops (prerecorded audio file of drums) instead. The result is what you find below. Astra_Cafe_V2.3.mp3 When we send these drafts and tracks back and forth, it's not just Darius and I making the decisions here. This is a group effort and the opinions of the whole team matter. They can listen and give us their two cents about the music. Even if they don’t know the music or production term of what they want, we can still parse what they mean. With the cafe theme, Delica is Ruby’s baby, so the final call was up to Ruby. Turns out Ruby thought it was a bit too uhh… adventurous? Outdoors-ey? Post-Mortem, oh yeah, 100% right. The drums just made it too “field theme” vs “cafe vibe.” Darius and I sat in a call for a while until we went “wait, how about Lo-fi?” Now I’d like to point out that I’ve only tried writing Lo-Fi twice about 3 - 4 years ago. Luckily, I only had to do drums for this. I found a Lo-Fi kit and wrote what I thought sounded like Lo-Fi in my head and sent that. Is it Lo-Fi? I dunno, but it sounded good and Ruby was happy that we understood her phrasing. After that it was just a few edits and nitpicks in the strings and koto. I really feel like the way I do music is a bit out of the norm compared to other composers and producers, but I feel that imbues the music with a uniqueness that gives it charm. Remember, what matters in the end is that you had fun and you think it sounds nice. Thanks for enduring my rambling, here’s your prize! This is the final version we settled on. (Lil pic of the project at the end too). Thanks for tuning in to learn more about the *m u s i c*! Please let us know what other departments you would like to see under the microscope for future updates! The most rewarding part of working on a team like this is getting to see everyone’s reactions as they experience the art you’ve created and Rust and I are forever grateful that you choose to share that with us. See you in the next one! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How was that music lesson? One of the biggest things for this cycle has been bringing Rust onboard and really diving into an OST for Desolation, and that is something I really want to invest into moving forward. So let us know your thoughts! We love to hear them, anyways, let's talk… Megas. A Mega Performance Yes, I couldn’t think of a title for this section, so here we go. Anyways, one of Desolation’s unique selling points has always been the custom Megas we have implemented into the game. Giving some Mons the spotlight in which they would have never been given the chance before… Until Legends ZA finally released and popped out Megas we already have in the game or Megas we have planned on adding… Hi Mega Feraligatr. But how do we actually decide upon what Mons we want to give custom Megas to? Well the thought process is simple… There isn’t one. Well that’s not entirely true, at the start of each Episode we sit down as a team and look at the upcoming content, a lot of factors come into play. We look at upcoming characters that are joining the Desolation cast, locations the player will be exploring, and then go through the Dex and think about what we think could be “neat” and “unique” to get a Mega. Mega Noivern fell into this category of “we love Noivern, the Canyon is nearby, this makes sense”, and for those who… are new or missed a previous post, yes we’re adding Mega Noivern. I guess I will also reveal that 2 more Mons will be getting a custom Mega this Episode. Which 2? Well I’ll leave you all to speculate on that one. Moving on, once we settle on the Mons, Ruby gets to work with a design. We have a brief discussion regarding stats so the design can be made to look if it’s going to be a bit more of an offensive attacker or a defensive one, on top of whether or not the Mon in question is changing types. For example, Deso’s Mega Feraligatr becoming a Poison type, we had to take into account how to implement a Poison element into its design. Once the design is finalised, I would then get to work on the stat distribution, ability and making a custom move? If it makes sense, for example Cinccino, oh and that includes giving the Mon additional moves if it becomes a new type. This role is now being handed over Omens while I still oversee and have the final say after discussions. But yeah, that’s how we go about the Mega process Basically we throw a dart at a board and whatever it lands on means Ruby goes through spriting hell and I honestly love that for her. (Ruby’s note: God. Save me.) Oh and one last thing, I mentioned about Legends ZA, those Megas? Yeah we’ll be adding them. When? Well either this Episode or next, I really haven’t decided yet how to go about it, but they will come at some point. As for the Megas we have created that now have “official” ones? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How does one end development blogs again? Uhh, go apply to join the team if you think you have what it takes! Seeing how our team has expanded from the original trio back in EP5 development to now really showcases the scale and level of growth Desolation has undertaken over the last several years, and I look forward to seeing what’s next. Until next time folks. Posty

Happy New Year folks! Well it’s already 24 days into the year… And a lot has already happened. Hope it’s treating you well, and if it ain’t then I hope that it does soon enough. In today’s development blog I will be touching on the changes within the Desolation Development Team (we have new members! Yes.. plural.) and I will be providing a bit of an “in depth” analysis about how I proceed with the level design for the game. A lot of you enjoyed our blog regarding the creative process Darius and Rust follow in producing original music for Desolation, so I wanted to showcase a bit of my process as well when it comes to mapping! I will also be including a sneak peek at a map coming to EP7 but before we jump into that, lets discuss… changes. A new year brings along new challenges and prospects, and in Desolation’s case, new team members. Please give a warm welcome to @MaggeyAttackey and @wiresegal as they join the Development Team! Mags will be joining us as an eventer, someone who will be working alongside me developing sidequest content and giving me a hand with main story elements. He has already proven himself with his creativity in the quests he has been working on, and it has been a real bit of fresh air to see what he is bringing to the team! Wire, on the other hand, joins us as a scripter who will be giving Yumil a hand in that department (can’t believe their reveal was leaked…). Wire has been contributing heavily to the community scripts project which for those who don’t know, Desolation shares a codebase with Reborn and Rejuvenation, so any changes that happen across one game is then passed onto the others, so everyone benefits! In their short time they have been here, they have already identified areas in Deso’s scripts to be optimised and incorporated some new systems into the game, some of which we will reveal at a later date so keep an eye out! The team has really expanded in the last few years, it’s weird to think how EP5 was only myself, Ruby and Caz and now we host a team of 10 who all share the same passion in continuing developing Desolation. The year is looking bright and I look forward to what’s to come. With that said, let’s move into the next segment of this blog, mapping. The Mapping Process So let’s talk about maps. Level design is something that I was initially looking at as a career path… until I realised that my prospects were more suited for Digital Marketing and Content Creation, but I still really enjoy mapping new areas for Desolation. With that said, how do I go about my maps? The best way to start this off is by showcasing the final design for a new area in EP7, here is Astraciel Wildwood, you’ll see that this version of the map is different from what was originally mapped in our public stream back in December 2024, but keep reading and it’ll make sense! I’m really happy with how this map turned out. I worked on this map across two Development Streams which were exclusive to members of our Patreon. EP7, despite the bumps along the way, has been one of my favourites in terms of our map designs, really embracing the different landscapes Arcanius has to offer and letting our creativity spill out through our locations. But how do I decide upon the design and what we need for the Game? My initial thought process follows a simple structure: Where is this area located? What is the purpose of this area? What sort of landscape will this area be? What is roughly the size of this area? Let’s take Astraciel Wildwood as an example to explain my process and go through these one at a time. Where is this area located? So as an extension of the existing Astraciel Wildwood map, it will sit around the top left side of Arcanius near Astraciel Town. This is an area I want players to step into after they leave Chryseum Canyon from the north exit, and then leaving the area will take them to Astraciel Town, so after looking at the map, there is only really one place it can fit which fulfills this criteria, as shown in the map below. What is the purpose of this area? With the vast difference of colours and natural landscape between Chryseum Canyon and Astraciel Town, realistically it doesn’t make much sense to leave the Canyon and end up in a town full of mushrooms. The solution to this? Create a map in between the two locations that acts as a natural “transition”, an area where the player walking through can really feel the change in environment as they progress from Point A to Point B. What sort of landscape will this area be? The area in question is outdoors, and the surrounding environment includes a ton of vegetation and trees. As a transition map between the two areas, I would need to ensure that we utilise trees from both tilesets, and include Astraciel’s unique vegetation which involves mushrooms near the exit to really represent that the player has entered a new portion of Arcanius. A forest map with a variety of tree colours, plants and mushrooms. What is roughly the size of this area? A key thing to remember is that size is crucial in level design, where do you want the player to go and how far should they realistically be in this area? You see this in the difference between large cityscapes to smaller villages, a city is an area where players have a ton of places to explore and even sometimes get lost in, while a small village has a few houses with clear indications where they are to go next. You don’t want a town to be too large or a city to be too small, it becomes difficult to really capture the finer details. Let’s apply this to Astraciel Wildwood, as a transition map I don’t want this to be extremely large as its purpose is to create a natural shift in the environment. But I also don’t want it to be too tiny as it’s meant to be a forest walkway. This is something that you will pick up the more you do level design, and definitely took me a bit to get it knuckled down to the level of knowledge I have now. Okay! With these questions answered and a vision in mind, I turn to creating a rough sketch to envision the sort of shape I want the map to take, how I want the player to progress from Point A to Point B, and how I want the player to get there. It is really important that you put yourself in the player’s shoes, picture yourself traversing through this map, is it tedious? Do the puzzles make sense? Is it too long winded? Let’s take this rough sketch for an underground map I’ve created for EP7 and break it down. Coming up with a map design can be tricky, but I would just say do something rough and adjust as you go. My rough sketches do not always correlate to the final design, it's rough after all. Anyways, as you can see, I clearly mark where I want the player to enter from and where I want the player to leave from, I also indicate on the map if there are any additional entrances the player can go into and explore, these I tend to mark with a little =. I normally have in mind at this point whether or not there will be a puzzle involved to open up the exit to the player, other maps may have additional sidequest content which I factor in, for example the Old Woodland with the Rufflet Egg sidequest. After the sketch is finalised and I’m happy with all its nooks and crankies, I head into my trusted friend, RPGMaker, and begin to map out this rough sketch onto the map. I have a different process if I’m doing an indoor map or outdoor map, for outdoor maps that feature trees, I mockup the rough layout with the bottom halves of the trees next to the borders of the map, while for indoor maps that utilise cliffs, I use layer three and mockup the quick sketch with a random tile, as shown in the brief examples below, these don’t follow the sketch above as I would be here all day lmao. Yes, very small examples, but you get the gist. One thing to note with trees is that unlike the original Gen 3 games how they just perfectly line up, I really am not a fan of it. I personally feel like it’s a bit tacky which is why I always opt for the approach shown above, it adds more of a pattern to the map, and I personally think it looks and feels a lot nicer in game. After I get my basic layouts finalised, I then get to work adding the tops to the trees and the initial first layer of cliffs, the end result looks a little like this. Really starting to take shape! Once I am happy with the design layout, I will then look to develop these further. With forest maps I will start to populate with your flowers, bushes, grass, and maybe chuck an item here and there. With cave maps, I will begin to build up the rest of the cliffs to give the area more depth, and then populate with some rocks, oh and also delete the sketch layer I set up. Yes I changed the floor colour for the cliff map, I used the wrong cliffs! Now these maps have some character to them, a small meadow area which is a bit secluded, and an upper level of a cave that could include an item or even a random event for a sidequest. With the mapping done, let’s see how it looks in game? You want to see how the player will fit into the world you’re creating after all. For this, let’s take a look at our little secluded meadow! Looking good! But before we can fully sign off this map, I always do an “out of bounds check”. What this means is I hug the edge of the map and see if you can see the abyss… aka the black void, for maps like these and cave maps, it’s very important that through the player’s eyes, these are not shown otherwise immersion can be lost. So let’s see… Oh dear. Now that’s not good, what would you think if you were in this nice forest map and saw the dark void which looks like it has cut off some of the trees? This is a key detail you need to fix with mapping, countless times it has happened to me in the past, luckily now I’ve memorised how many tiles it takes from each direction for the player to see the edge of the map, it's always good to keep it in mind! When it comes to interior maps, seeing the black void is completely fine as it indicates you’re inside a smaller space. Just make sure that if you have multiple interiors to different houses on the same map, they are spaced out nicely so you don’t get a sneak peek into another house! Much better. And that is my mapping process! After a map is finalised, I will then look to populate with more items, trainers and then events for main story/sidequest content where I see fit. Let me know what you think about this style of post, I haven’t really gone through my processes like this before so I hope that this was at least a bit interesting! With that, go give our new team members a nice welcome to the team, I can’t wait to showcase more of what they and the rest of us have been working on throughout the year! Til next time. Posty