Look no further! This is the thread for you!

Like last time, I'd like to open suggestions for possible Crest ideas! There are a few rules, though.

• Crest ideas with just base stat buffs will not be considered. Get creative!
• Pokemon that are considered good can be suggested, but only if it offers a different style of play.
• Avoid Pokemon that already have a Crest in game.
• No Crest that allows for Ash-Greninja or anything similar :]
   

That's it! I look forward to your suggestions. This thread will close when we've gotten enough suggestions we like. A warning will be given out before that is done.

Edit: Gen 8 Pokemon are included in this! Give me your Gen 8 ideas!

Would you take a look at this hot diddly darn new spiffy lookin' dev blog we've got for Rejuvenation here! hellllll yeah. From now on, all the important news on the game's development will be posted here instead of in the V13 status thread we used previously. As some probably noticed, the V13 thread tended to get messy and would bury any significant updates in regards to the game as quickly as they got posted. So! After some consultation with Ame and Cass, we finally got our own Dev blog so these updates no longer will get buried and will remain easy to find!

However, at this point in time, there's no actual news we can share, so we're starting off the dev blog with a recap of all the things that have been posted since the V13 thread's gone up. I'm sure some of you probably have missed some of these, so here's our refresher course on the state of the game at this point in time!

The current situation:

Development has been... Slow. For several reasons. Here's the current state of matters.

• The first and foremost reason that Development hasn't been going as fast is that after V12 came out, we had to wait until November for SWSH to come out, so we could focus on getting Gen 8 implemented in Rejuvenation. This already put a delay on the next update by roughly half a year. We've been graciously getting help from several people with this, and I would like to thank @Marcello specifically for having been an absolutely great help to us for scripting several of the pain-in-the-neck abilities and moves! Godspeed you magnificent bastard. Couldn't have it done without you. 
  • This ties in to that because Gen 8 has been implemented, all the encounters and battles needed revisions to support Gen 8! However, this is taking a long time, and encompasses quite a bit of work. Azery and Alex are doing their best to get everything figured out, but it's taking time, part of the reason being that we needed to implement the mons first before we could actually change the teams/encounters, lol. It's a vicious cycle. BUT, all of the mons have been implemented! So now it's just a matter of going through and updating everything.
  • Spriting wise only a couple of the GMax sprites are left! I've personally been seeing to getting the backsprites done for them. Honestly, the biggest saving grace to the graphics side of the project was that we were able to use front sprites of many of the Pokemon from Smogon's Gen 8 project (thank you again for letting us use the sprites!), which saved us quite literally half the time and work. All the shinies are done too, which leaves only roughly.... 23 sprites left in total? For base game Gen 8, that is. I'm uh. Not counting Gen 8.5 rn. I don't want to think about it hhahaAAA.............. either way gen 8 on the graphics side is almost complete and i hope to finish the remainder of sprites sometime next week. Would be REAL nice to cross that thing off the to-do list.
• Jan has been struggling with his health for a while. This was already prior to the pandemic, but recently posted that he did, in fact, contract COVID-19 and fell sick. He's on the road of recovery, though! It's only very likely that until the worst has passed in the area he lives in (which unfortunately is NYC, the epicentre of the pandemic in the US), stuff will remain slow on his side unless he generally feels better and/or more motivated to work on things again. He's been working on revisiting and redoing old areas in the game for final polish, though most of this is unplanned, hence why there's been not much progress on the "updating old maps" bar, let alone the new content bar. We hope you all support Jan through this tough time! Keep him in your thoughts sometime. He's doing his best.
• Last but not least, well, compared to V12, V13 is just.... Absolutely huge. There is SO much content to it. I've said it several times before, but the reason that V12's dev cycle was so short and why it feels as if V13 is taking so much longer was because V12, in comparison, genuinely is just short. I can't go into details for reason you probably can all understand and respect, but it's a TON of content, and there's just a lot of work left for it! However, I can guarantee you that even though it's taking this long, it'll be worth the wait. We're not gonna give out an estimate as of when V13 will be done because there's just too many factors tying in that make it hard to keep up a consistent pace in progress, but we sincerely appreciate all the patience all of you have been showing despite it having been nearly a year since V12 released. We hope to keep your patience until the end of the dev cycle!

Now that you're up to date, it's time for all the teasers that've been posted! Everything will be put in spoilers because otherwise this post gets uh. Very long. But it's nice to have everything in one place now! Content that's exclusively new content to V13 (so not revisions to older areas) are labeled as V13 teasers, so don't open those if you don't want to get spoiled on the new stuff!

October 18th, 2019 - V13 teaser 1 (Jan) 

November 4th, 2019 - The reservoir (Route 4 revamp) (Jan)

December 3rd, 2019 - V13 teaser 2 (Jan)

December 10th, 2019 - V13 teaser 3 (Jan)

 December 10th, 2019 - Route 4 new theme (Jan)

December 23rd, 2019 - Protagonist VS portrait updates

December 25th, 2019 - V13 teaser 4 (Jan)

January 2nd, 2020 - Gen 8 spriting update 1 (Zumi)

January 5th, 2020 - Volta (Zumi)

January 25th, 2020 - Keta VS portrait update (Zumi)

January 26th, 2020 - Gen 8 spriting update 2 (Zumi)

February 1st, 2020 - Character art part 1 (Zumi)

February 9th, 2020 - New forest backgrounds (Jan)

February 28th, 2020 - Gen 8 spriting update 3 (Zumi)

March 19th, 2020 - Gen 8 spriting update 4 (Zumi)

April 1st, 2020 - Saki twitter (Zumi)

April 8th, 2020 - Zetta VS sprite update (Zumi)

April 14th, 2020 - Character art part 2 (Zumi)

April 17th, 2020 - Character art part 3 (Zumi)

April 26th, 2020 - Character art part 4 (Zumi)

April 27th, 2020 - General update on old content (Jan)

May 1st, 2020 - Rorim B VS portrait update (Zumi)

May 3rd, 2020 - Character wallpapers (Zumi)

...Aaaand that's about it for all the updates we've had! I know a bunch of these are extra content and not really super directly related to V13 development, but it's still stuff for you to enjoy while you wait for V13 to come out, no? hehe.

There's more to show in the future, but for now we're sticking to this recap. We'll show off more when the time is right! For now, I welcome you to this shiny new dev blog and hope you're looking forward to more updates!

Just another general update! I've been working hard on the game, but I've also been feeling pretty demotivated and burned out lately. Mainly due to me being home all the time and not being able to get out as much. You'd think I'd get a lot more done with the massive amount of time I've had, yeah? Hahaha, no. In fact, I've been slower because of all of this.(More of this rant below!!!)

Depression.png

Because of that I've taken a week off. Like... actually. An entire week. I've done nothing. Man did it feel awesome. (Afterwards, during the break I was bored as hell.)
Imagine that. Taking genuine breaks HELPS your motivation and mood. ???? Sounds fake, but okay... Anyway.

I've switched my focus to working primarily on v13 story content. I feel like if I have that out of the way, releasing v13 will feel... Idk. Possible?

*Cough*

Well, it's the end of August. That means we're all going back to school... Huh? You're done with school? Y-You graduated? Well... Courtesy of me, I've re-enrolled you! Who's ready for a new semester of dreams and nightmares?? You are!I 

---REJUV MK UPDATE---

As well as working on main content mostly, @andracass helped us create our own MK build! Starting V13, Rejuv will have MK support. There are still a few things that need to be ironed out, but things are looking really promising!

As for Mac support... We have something for that too! Mac users won't be left out B).

---Puzzle time Baybeee---

One thing I've been trying to do in past areas is add more puzzles. Most of these puzzles aren't difficult. They're just there to add some sort of interactivity in places that have gameplay luls. I've created some things that I'm proud of, but coming up with puzzles in RPGMaker seems impossible to me sometimes. I'm the first one to admit that I'm not excellent at making them, but I would like to be! If you guys have any puzzle concepts to share, I'd be happy to hear them! 

I beg you.

---When is V13 dropping?---

Short answer: Still trying for this year.

Long Answer: My goal is to have it out by the end of the year, but that's still only 3 months from now. I've seen people get annoyed with me because of the long wait, but I assure you no one is more annoyed than I. Like I said in the beginning of this post. I've been burned out and unmotivated all year. I'm not going to sit here and lie about my productivity. I said I've been working hard on the game, it's true. But that wasn't the case for the majority of the year. 

There were days where I would do one event and just feel done. I've felt guilty about it, but I've also just felt numb to the fact that I pretty much just vegetated this year. Everytime I felt like things were getting better, things would knock me down another peg. It's been a cycle since February. Aghjgfsghskjlghsdgjds;jgsdh;

I've read articles about how this isn't a problem exclusive to me. Working productivity for tons of people have been almost 0 this year. With circumstances I don't have to repeat because we all know-- It's just difficult. I just try to tell myself that next year will be better. Whether that's a blatant lie or not doesn't matter. It's there for a sense of purpose.

If I can sum up this year for me in one image, it'd be:

and that's all it is.

That being said, we've gotten progress up to 71%!! Even though most of that is bloated because of a lot of smaller things getting done... It still looks nice and is a motivating factor for me! Still have a lot of sidequests to do and I have to finish the main story (Which is over 50% done now!). 

Alright that's enough rambling. I'm done. I promise. Rejuv v13 hopefully drops this year. If not, early 2021. Definitely not any later than that. Then onto v14...

Ha.

HAhahahaha.

I can't wait for v14.

Last week I uploaded a small preview of v13 to my Patreon! This is a very rough draft of an early part of the main story.

Of course, there will be slight spoilers. Continue at your own discretion!

Not much else to say other than: If you have any comments, feedback, and or suggestions(relevant ones to this video), feel free!

Still a lot to do, but I'm definitely making progress...

Also there's a slight audio blip at 1:35. Sorry :[. 

Edit:

These tiles were created by Ekat! These came out so well and pls thank her for her hard work!

A full image of them are on her twitter. Please go check them out!! 

There's a bit of a catch though.

The plan was to give 1st place the illustration, and that stays that way! Aelita will be receiving a full illustration to go along with V13's release. However, the idea had surfaced while the polls were open to give 2nd and 3rd place artwork as well, which I really liked. Therefore, Erin will also be receiving a full illustration that will be released after V13 comes out, during V14's development. But then there's Melia.... And as much as I might probably disappoint some people with this, Melia has been featured in a lot of artwork already. After some discussion with the rest of the dev team, we've decided that the illustration will be given to Venam instead, who placed 4th! That way we can keep things fresh, and give a character that hasn't had as big of a chance in the art spotlight a full illustration instead. This illustration will also be released during V14's development, though it's possible it'll release alongside V14 instead if there's too little time to work on a second full piece. Hope you guys are looking forward to the art regardless!

Now, back to the poll results... I did have to purge a couple of submissions or deem some invalid due to them being repeat votes of the same thing in the same submission (or reborn characters... im looking at the ppl who voted adrienn despite me having said the cameo characters dONT COUNT), so not *all* of the votes are listed -- especially for the things/people that only got one vote -- but here's a couple of the funnier ones we've seen between the answers/votes!

• "PIRATE VALARIE AND HER BABIES (me)"
• "that edgy guy with the latios i forgot his name" (Damien)
• "YE, ye, Ye", three votes in the same submission
• "Geara's left shoe 1, 2 and 3"
• "Ninja Nim"
• "Pupper Master"
• "i don't even remember what the characters are named at this point, sry for wasting your time have a nice day"
• "Kanye west"

So, how do you guys feel about the results? Were they as expected, or are a couple of placement surprising to you? Feel free to discuss it!

Also, there's a wallpapers of the artwork made for this without the text able to be found here! I'll also be linking it in the official art thread under wallpapers.

Thank you all for voting in the poll! This was a blast. Maybe we'll host another one of these in a couple of years once we're a couple versions further!

Until next time y'all o7

So I know I said in my previous character update post that I'd do one more character art batch, a rift mon and then *maybe* a bonus batch for some of the sidequest characters, but... well, let's just explain it like this:

the angel on my left shoulder said "keep the work split up in several batches and spread it over time so you don't get burnt out!"

the devil on my right shoulder said "DO EVERYTHING AS FAST AS POSSIBLE IN ONE BIG BATCH SO YOU CAN GET TO V13 STUFF FASTER"

so of course i kicked the angel straight out of the window and did the thing the little devil told me to do.

and i didn't get burnt out either! so i see that as a victory. heaven can suck it. im walking backwards into hell facing god flipping the bird at him

ANYWAYS, my ramblings aside... This is the final batch of character art that will be publicly released prior to V13. It includes all of the remaining characters from Chapter 14, several characters from the more significant sidequests, as well as all of the remaining rift mons. In this final batch we have Aelita (3rd), Lorna, Alice, Allen, Sakitron, Amandabot, Ryland (Posessed), Kieran, [REDACTED], Isha, Delpha, Karen, Karrina, Spector, Ana, Dylan, Volta, Jolene and Goomink for the characters, and for the rift mons we have Chandelure (which got a slight redesign!), Ferrothorn, Gardevoir, Hippowdon and Dufaux! Let's take a look below!

CHARACTERS

RIFT MONS

*EXHALES*

i can't fucking believe that i did all of these in one go. oh my good fucking god. and now i'm done. that's 109 character and mon drawings done in a little less than half a year.

am i dead? maybe. was it worth it? absolutely.

Anyways, as always, all of the art can be found back in the official art thread, along with bonus icons, wallpapers and links to the full resolution versions of all the individual works! I've also uploaded versions of the rift mons without the rift background (since i finally got off my ass and decided to free carnivine from being stuck to a background lsdhfjdsfk) so you can use those for whatever purposes too.
 

So yeah! That about wraps it up for me with the frequent updates on the dev blog for now. I'm done hogging the place for the time being and won't be posting unless I've got some other graphics update that's significant enough that it's worth making a post about. Unfortunately for those who are interested in the art side of things, I'm pretty certain that all the work from this point on out for me is V13 related, and therefore I very likely can't show it off until V13 itself is actually out, so for now I'll be handing the dev blog back to Jan and quit flooding the place with my nonsense lasjdkgagdsjfask

Thank you all so much for the support and kind words you guys have given throughout the past couple of months while I was working on these! I'm honestly so incredibly happy I was able to bring all of the characters and rift mons to life in their artwork. It was a ton of work, but I had an absolute blast working on it, and I'll definitely be making more the more versions come out.

Until next time!

Zumi, heading out o7

Quote

Big announcement here today. Good news and bad (Depending on how you view this!)

I took a big look at my list of things to do for the rest of V13.

Taking everything into account: My pacing, the team's pace, the large amount of work that still needs to get done, other ??? things... It was starting to look like a 2021 Spring/Summer release.

Quite frankly... That's way too long of a wait.

 

After discussing it with the team, we've come to the conclusion that the workload we have for this version is just too much. It's unhealthy. I will be the first one to admit that I probably took on way too much. The troubles this year threw at me
were unprecedented.  It's gotten to the point where I've been extremely stressed out just by thinking about the game, which in turn, slows me down even further. That, topped on with school and irl responsibilities. It's been a rough year, for sure.

Not to mention the things we need to test for with Route 4 and other various new things coming to V13. It's... It's a lot. I didn't mean for it to be this much, but that's just how it played out in the end, I suppose.

 

As a result, I've decided to cut content.... Temporarily!

Going forward, I will be releasing V13 in two parts. Base V13, and then a few months later will have V13.5. This way I can focus on important things and try to complete it without the daunting task that will be sidequests.

That also means that if I dedicate a mini version to just side quests and the like, I can spend more time on them and make them how I want to. No cutting corners!

So, what will both packs look like? This is what I have:

----

 

V13 will have:
-Main Story content
-First layer of Route 4.
-Ana's Quest + Other minor quests
-Gen 8 (Not including DLC)
-A compensation gift from the Dev Team! (This is a super secret surprise)

 

V13.5 will have:
-Crown Tundra/Isle of Armor DLC.
-Expanded Route 4.
-7+ major quests dealing with main characters.

----

 

I've mentioned before that I really don't want any side quests during V14's cycle, and I stand by that. I want to give the time these quests deserve because I feel like these are gonna be some of people's favorites so far. Quality over anything and everything.
...I'm also scared that if I continue at this rate, I'll lose steam again. Last time it took nearly 5 months to get back to speed. Next time might be longer. I want to finish this game eventually lol.

It's a little disappointing, I'm sure. But I believe this to be the best course of action.
Think of it as Rejuv DLC, lol. Except it's free. As for that compensation gift? I won't tell you what it is... But I think you're going to be happy with it. That's all I'm going to say on that.

That's all I have to say for this week. I know this can be disappointing to some, but it'll be better this way, I promise. 

...

...

...

Hope all is well!

- Jan

Click me now or suffer the consequences.

THIS DOES NOT INCLUDE DLC CONTENT

THIS DOES NOT INCLUDE DLC CONTENT

THIS DOES NOT INCLUDE DLC CONTENT

This means no G-Slowpoke line, Starter Gmaxes, and the Crown Tundra content, etc etc etc. 

If anything is missing, please let me know. I'll have the pack updated immediately. Have a nice day

So while V13 obviously got a lot of graphical and gameplay improvements and new stuff added, both in terms of sprites, maps and game performance, there's also some stuff that'll be fresh off the grill in the music department! In fact, V13 will bring quite a number of new songs to the table that were custom made for the game. I myself am also once again providing a good number! ...Though, I can't go and let people listen to all of the tracks that have been made so far right away, now can I?

Nonono, that won't do. I'll let you listen to this snippet instead. One small bit at a time!

Any guesses as of what this'll be used for?  You will receive a proper answer in due time... Once V13 is out. Until then you will just have to wait. And maybe you'll get a couple more previews in the future, who knows!

For now, though....

:^) .

"But Zumi, why is this a thing now all of a sudden?", I hear you think, to which I say; Well, dear reader, this popularity poll is to determine who is getting the next bonus wallpaper. For V11 we had Angie and for V12 we had Ryland -- though both of them were internal choices (and with internal i mean my own choices HAHA), so I felt it'd be cool to have the audience vote for the next character that receives a special illustration! Even though I'm already doing a crazy amount of work for V13 (I'm working on the next batch of characters already), I don't mind going the extra mile and throw in another fully rendered illustration for people to enjoy along with V13's release when that time comes around.

Any votes that do not adhere to the rules displayed upon opening the form will not be counted and deemed as invalid. You need a Google account to vote, and you have only one shot at voting. Don't waste the opportunity!

The poll will run until the end of the month, July 31st. The votes will close and the results will be announced shortly after!

Good luck, and may the most popular character win! o7

VOTE HERE!

I've put them in a spoiler tag in case some of you want to stay blind, but @Zumi's done such an amazing job with this! 

Dunno how many more we'll do for V13 because, as you can imagine-- These take a lot of time to create. Here are just a few of the unique backgrounds we'll have! (Please note that the bases have not been updated yet! So they may clash with the background for now.)

As for V13 progress in general... Still working on the final segments for the story. But it's a lot of work and I don't want to rush! So, thank you guys for being patient with me <3.

I am back with more character art, this time with the characters from Gearen city, both from the past and the present! From Kugearen we have Melia's 3rd appearance, Venam's 2nd appearance, Kanon, Maria, Vitus and Anathea, while for West gearen we have Amanda and Erick.

That's another eight characters off the list! There's still, uh.... many to go. Counting everything not including V13 content, I still have another 46 characters to go (even though some of these are alternate outfits for characters, kinda like how Melia, Venam etc. got art for those as well), and that's EXCLUDING side characters that I may still want to draw in the future.

oh, and the rift mons. those are getting art now too. because i have no impulse control! so you'll be seeing art of those in the near future as well. god has cursed me for my hubris and my work is never finished. such is my life. BUT IT'S FIIIIIIIINE.

ANYWAYS, as per usual, all the character artwork along with a link to full resolution versions of the art and bonus icons can be found in the official art thread! I haven't made wallpapers for these characters yet, but I'll get around to doing that sometime this upcoming week. I'll make sure to post an update in the forum status bar when I've uploaded them, so keep an eye out there if you want to get your hands on those!

Until next update! o7

This batch is out a lot earlier than I initially planned for, but considering I have a lot of work I need to do this upcoming week that isn't Rejuv related, I felt it'd be a good thing if I did this one in advance. And lo and behold - probably the largest batch of characters thus far! ...If you don't count the rift mons from one of the previous batches, that is. Whatever the case, let's take a look at the characters that received art. As a continuation of chapter 12, Mosely received art of both her regular timeline outfit and her bad future outfit. Next to that, we've got the Bad Future editions of Kenneth, Amber, Tesla and Valarie, along with Melanie, Melia in her Absolute God Mode(TM) outfit (for a lack of better terms. honestly i don't think Jan ever gave it a proper name), Souta and Rift Aelita! And speaking of rifts, as a bonus, I've added artwork of Rift Garbodor as well. Might as well, no?

Here they are!

Rift artwork:

man, did i tell you guys i love drawing spooky shit? because i do. it's so incredibly fun. y'all should try it sometimes if you're used to drawing mostly bright and colorful stuff. it's SUCH a nice change of pace

Also, as a general note, I've sorted the full resolution artwork per chapter now in the albums! Some characters that appear in new batches of art might be sorted in a different chapter than the batch of art they appeared in when looking at the full res art albums. This was i.e. the case for Amanda who got placed in Chapter 1, as is the case for Mosely as well -- her regular outfit is placed within Chapter 4's album. This is done to avoid spoiling people who might need the art for stuff like thumbnails (or just wanna see the art) for content they haven't reached yet in the game. Hope that clears up any confusion people might have with how the artwork is sorted.

regardless, as per usual, all the art can be found back in the official art thread, along with bonus icons! i haven't done the wallpapers yet this time around bc i'm a lazy bastard but i'll have them done by the time the next batch rolls around.

anyways, that's all for now! see y'all later o7

Hey all! Here we are once again with another update. It's been a little bit longer between this batch and the previous one, but I've been busy with some stuff. Had a couple of deadlines I needed to meet 'n all! But I know that y'all aren't here to hear about my life outside of rejuv so let's get back on topic, shall we?

This batch we're featuring characters from Chapter 13, A.K.A. That One Version Without A Gym Badge But Not Really Because Apparently I Just Forgot Adam's Fight Is Part of V11 And Not V12(TM)! In this batch we have Melia (4th appearance), Reina, Ren (2nd Appearance), Ryland, Hazuki (Young), Nymiera (Casual), Anastasia, Nastasia and Adam (GDC)! This crosses another nine characters off the list. And also, thankfully this is the last time I'll have to draw Melia as far as I know, so dfjgkdfhnjsd five whole melias is plenty, thank you very much. Let's take a look at the art!

...I know a lot of you probably want to see Rift Gardevoir, but I'll be completely honest and say that I deadass forgot that I could've probably drawn her for this batch and only remembered at the time of actually writing this sentence. i am sorry.

For what it's worth, after the next batch (which will be the final batch of characters that's publicly released!), I'll probably make one last separate post with all of the remaining rift mons. After that, it's all V13 content on out! I know I'm not done yet, but I still want to thank you all for supporting me and motivating me to keep on going with these because lord knows how much work this has been so far ahHHHHHHHHHHHH

As per usual, all the art can be found back in the official art thread, along with bonus icons and wallpapers! I've also uploaded the wallpapers for the previous batch of characters, so you'll be able to get those now as well.

See y'all next time for the last character batch! o7

Greetings fellow earthlings i am HERE............. To bring more character art! This time around it's time to bring the characters from Chapter 10 and the start of Chapter 11, meaning it's time to put Alexandra, Flora (both in her regular and her bladestar attire), Florin, Aelita (2nd appearance), Erin, Rhodea, Huey and Lavender in the spotlight!

...Though, as the title suggests, you probably didn't think that's all there was to this post, huh? Well, you're right, as I have something else to show off as well -- The first batch of Rift Mon artwork has been finished!

I initially planned to do all of them at once, but I figured out that these are an excellent change of pace from drawing tons of characters (you start running out of poses at some point LOL), so I decided to draw the first four you encounter in the story! ...Unfortunately, my clown ass forgot to unmerge the rift background pattern from Carnivine in photoshop and I closed the document only to find out that I cannot unmerge it tonight. that???? feels so fucking bad. oh my god. i'm a FOOL. A TOTAL BUFFOON. AUGH.

but yeah anyways that's why there's no full transparent versions of the mons yet. i'll get to that later. for now enjoy stuff with backgrounds, i'll probably make a new background for all of the mons when i've fixed that hot garbage, good lord

Either way!!!! As per usual, all the art can be found back in the official art thread, along with a link to the full resolution art, bonus icons and wallpapers (I added the wallpapers for the previous batch of characters too by the way!! I didn't forget). Go ham, and see you next time!

o7

yeah i've actually been doing things that probably were a bit overdue anyways.

Today's update from me to you is about the VS sprites! There's already been a couple of sprites that received updates, namely Zetta & Keta which I have shown off prior to this post -- go check the recap post at the start of the dev blog, they're in there somewhere! -- but I spent yesterday and today fixing up some more! And ooh boy, some of these took a good bit of time to fix up (ariana, i'm looking at you. why did your face give me so much trouble ma'am.), so I hope you'll appreciate the improvements on some of these! Let's do a before and after showcase! The sprites on the left are the old ones, and the ones on the right are the new ones. 

Amanda

So this is, along with SEC, one of the sprites that has gone without an update for a long, long LONG ass time, and was in dire need of cleaning. Her hair and and cap have been sprited entirely anew, and looks much more accurate to her official art now.The shading also got a slight fixing, particularly on her hand and the pokeball she's holding.

Ren

Not much has changed in terms of the clothing, but the facial shape is different, along with the shading on the hair being a teeeeny tiny bit different. Honestly, looking at it now next to his old sprite I'm not 100% convinced it's exactly how I want it to look like quite yet? Ren looks kinda young in this sprite compared to the one he has at a later point in the game, so I might still do some further editing before V13 is out. It's headed in the right direction, at least!

Eli & Sharon

Eli looks even more clueless, and Sharon looks even more Tired Of This Shit(TM). This is one of the sprites that suffered from pointless detailing in the shading that made the sprite look messy and cluttered (Amanda, Valarie, Flora and Florin also being victims of this), so everything has been simplified a bit. Sharon also no longer has the earpiece, as it felt redundant to keep, and the pokeball shes holding has also been colored red.

SEC

I... Don't think this sprite ever got an update before LOL. I think the difference here is relatively clear; the color has been fixed, and the shading has been updated in several places. The black screen has also been made *slightly* bigger, and the pokeball icon has been redone entirely.

Madame X

Not a whole lot has changed on this sprite outside of that the shading has been improved, along with that the colors have been fixed slightly. The outline of the hand now also is darker, making the whole a bit more readable than it was before.

Valarie

Ah yes.... Miss hair clutter. I don't know why I thought it was a good idea to add so much detail in her hair back when I did the first edit of her existing sprite, but the messiness should be quite a bit less now! Her eye shape is now also slightly different, giving her a little bit more unique facial features instead of being almost entirely the same to Elesa's sprite in B/W. Other than that, there's been some color correction and reshading, so all in all the sprite looks a lot cleaner now!

Crawli

I think out of all the edits I've done this one is the least notable? But his face is slightly longer, the eyes are a bit different and his shoulders a bit wider.  At least he no longer looks like he's like 9 years old lmao

Flora

This is probably one of the more significant updates! As much as I like her old hair (despite it being huge in her vs sprite, what the fuck), it's not accurate to her official art, and therefore I had to change it. Next to that, her facial expression is quite different now, along with that she no longer has her hand resting against her face, but instead in a semi-relaxed pose on the right of her. I did this for the reason that I'd like to keep the amount of duplicate poses to an absolute minimum, and Flora used to share a base with Melia's 1st and 2nd VS sprite, which is something I no longer wanted.

Florin

Florin's sprite DEFINITELY needed some polish. His hair was a mess, and so was his hand! Sir!!!! ARE YOUR FINGERS OK????? i don't know why i thought it looked fine the way it did. i suppose as time goes on you get a better eye for these things.

Either way, he looks quite a bit better now! His hair looks closer to his official art now, and his hand no longer has broken fingers (i also switched it to be his left hand instead of his right). The colors of his shirt and vest now also match the official art better, along with that his shirt has a collar now. The face also has a better overall shape now and has his chin looking less like a V -- and to top it off, he looks more confident in his sprite now!

Adam

Probably the edit I'm the most proud of out of these! The old one honestly looked kinda weird and I 100% understand the comments that I got at the time of V11's release that Adam looked weird (mostly because of his hair), so I made it a point to make him look Less Weird(TM) in his official art. And as I said before, I was going to fix Adam's sprite to match his art better, so here we are! Adam 2.0! His eyes are now peeking from behind his sunglasses (which are smaller now), along with that his facial shape is thinner and his hand is in a slightly different pose. His ponytail now also shows up on screen and his bangs are a bit shorter so they no longer rest on his shoulders. I feel like his sprite emanates a lot more personality in the second version, so I feel like this is a significantly positive change in appearance!

 Moving on, the protagonist sprites also got a couple of touch-ups.

Ariana

Almost nothing beside her hair color being slightly lighter, her skin color now matches her official art and her facial shape has changed. However, can I complain about her face for a second? For SOME reason, her face gave me absolute hell to get right. THE EYES, MAN. HOW DO I GET THEM TO LOOK RIGHT. THE ANGLE IS SO WEIRD AND YOU HAVE SO LIMITED SPACE TO WORK WITH. HFJDGDFGNDFBGDHJF I AM DYING, SQUIRTLE

ahem.

i am ok. i think.

either way, Ariana, like Ren, is subject to change in the future because I am still not fully settled on if I'm satisfied with this or not. I'll sleep a night on this one and see again later. maybe i'm just tired and that's why it turned out weird. idk

Axel

Axel had a bit of a messily shaded vs portrait, so I've gone and fixed the shading on his hair, face and vest. He also has a grin on his face now to match the official art better!! The hair has one less color used now, giving it an overall more clean look. His vest is now also distinctly grey, as for some reason the vest in the previous version was the same color as his shirt??? which isn't actually the case in his art?? oh well. in his alt outfit, the edge of the lil jacket he has over his shirt now looks a bit cleaner. overall, it's not that big of an update, but an update nonetheless!

And last but not least...

Aevis

okay. so i can hear you thinking "WAIT. BUT THAT'S A LOT MORE DIFFERENT." and i respond to that with yes! it is! his hair is different!

Aevis has been under prospect for a while in regards to a slight design change, due to feedback from a good amount of people that his hairstyle felt very plain compared to all the other protagonists. Jan and I did a bit of brainstorming (along with collecting some feedback from Jan's patreon server members), and eventually settled on this new hairstyle for him! His battlesprite and backsprites will be updated to match the change accordingly. Nothing else about him has changed though -- it's just the hair. He'll keep his good ol' green clothes as we saw no reason to change that from what it was before.

-----

Honestly, normally I don't even write these long winded posts for sprites, but I felt like some people might like to know the thought process behind some of these changes I make to sprites, so I wanted to have a more elaborate post for a change when it comes to graphical updates. I'll also very likely be doing a pass on a couple of battle sprites as well, but I won't be making a separate post for those.

For now, thank you for reading! Let me know what you guys think of the changes! 

Until next time! (which will probably be a character art post or smth. yeehaw)

o7

Lots of cool things coming in V13!

So it seems we're over the 50% mark. I still have a LOT of work to do, but I can see the light now. A glimmering light that's evaded me for so long...

Gen 8 is almost completely implemented. We need to update some team rosters for some new additions, as well as edit fields to work with new abilities and moves!

Zumi, as you can tell, has focused more on the character art, and lemme tell you... They work so well in game. Zumi's really carrying me right now. If you like the art you've

seen, please, please, PLEASE, tell her how much you love it. Because my goodness is it great.

As for me, I've taken a break from tweaking early content and decided it's time to focus on main story stuff, and oh boy... No one's ready.
Finally, so many answers will be given. I can't wait to show you guys what we've been keeping secret. 

But with even more answers, I know for sure that more questions will be raised. Maybe this cycle can never be broken. Who knows? We'll have to see.

I actually made this as a surprise for Jan a couple of days ago, but the idea to make a new logo has been floating around in the back of my mind for a while now. I finally got the inspiration I needed, and lo and behold! From now on, this new logo will be found on the game's title screens and anything else that might need it. I've also put it (along with the separate elements) in the official art thread in case you might need them for something!

It's not really much of a big update, I'm well aware, but I felt it appropriate to show off the new logo to kick off the new stuff on the dev blog. Outside of that there's not much to share... Except, well, I guess I'm six sprites away from completing all the Gen 8 sprites??? After that it's just shinies (though thankfully I don't have to do those myself) and we're completely done with the graphics side of the Gen 8 addition to the game! I'll very likely have them done by tomorrow or so, so I guess this is an early completion celebration as I'm not gonna make a new post for it?!?!? YEA

On the topic of Gen 8, Alex and Azery are currently blazing through the encounters and sprinkling gen 8 mons in everywhere, so we're starting to get into the swing of things again. Expect some of those status bars to go up in progress sometime soon as a result! There's still a lot left to do, but either way we're still making progress and progress is better than no progress, right? absolutely

That's all for now though! See y'all for the next update o7

"Every version I get a lot of questions asking what contributes to what ending. Will this decision put me towards the good ending? Maybe the bad? The worst? I became sort of tired of these questions, but I understood that it's because nothing is really clear outside of obvious circumstances.

For example, the true ending of the chapter involving Melanie. If you get the good option, you'll know. If you get the bad ending, you'll know. But what about other choices in the game? How will I know? It's a long game and I would like to know which choices matter, etc.

Well, from v13 and onward, you will know! Every quest that contributes to any ending will notify you. But what do I mean by "notify"?

 =============================== 

Quests that contribute to the good and true ending will display like this:

https://imgur.com/XhoXDzZ

Quests that don't necessarily contribute to any ending will display like this:

https://imgur.com/WQPPJYX

===============================

But this transparency isn't limited to quests. Any decision you make will clearly display which path it set you down.

Decisions that contribute to the good ending will display:

https://imgur.com/pzjphHj

Decisions that contribute to the bad ending will display:

https://imgur.com/APSyL8U

...And decisions that contribute to the worst ending will display:

https://imgur.com/hpCBLyz

This is all very WIP and the gears will disappear moments after they're displayed. I'll probably make custom graphics for each one, but for now, these are their placeholders.

=============================== 

Speaking of Quests... They've also gotten an overhaul with the use of Quest Cards!

These are just a few examples of the new Quest cards I'm working on. Really excited for them and gives each quest their own feel of importance. As shown above, each card will be personally stylized as well. Overall this is mostly a cosmetic change rather than a gameplay/mechanic change. Just one of those things I'm working on when I'm tired and requires not much effort from me."

Let me guys know what you think. Any suggestions? Anything else you want clarity on? This is a great time to ask as I'll be watching this thread closely for a while.

...63% hype... Even though most of that is inflated bc of Gen 8 stuff.... But still!!

No rift mons this time around as I didn't really feel like working on them, but hopefully the 9 new art pieces will make up for it. This time, it's the remaining characters from Chapter 11 and a couple of characters from the start of Chapter 12 -- Risa, Cassandra, Madelis (2nd outfit), Puppet Master, Damien, Cella (Old & Young), Vivian and Anju. Part of me feels like I could've probably waited with Damian, but considering you see him for the first time in GDC, it's fiiiiiiiiiiine. Here we go!

Not counting V13 content and the rift mons, I have roughly another 28 pieces of art to go for characters that are mandatory! I still plan to draw a couple of bonus characters (Think Goomink, Truck Guy, Piano Lady etc.) as well as Karen and Karinna at some point, but those are all for after I've done all the artwork that I currently have listed for myself. Either way, we're at LEAST 2/3 done when it comes to all the official art for characters!

WEW.

As per usual, all the artwork can be found back in the art thread, along with icons and wallpapers of the characters!

Also, on a final note, thank you all for the kind words you've been sending my way after Jan put up his update post! It's very, very much appreciated and motivated me to keep going with the artwork  I plan to do one batch at least once every two weeks to keep up the pace and have everything done on time so it can all be implemented into the game as Jan has shown off they will, so I hope you will keep supporting the development of the game and the artwork!!

o7

So, unsurprisingly, last time I posted an audio preview people were trying really hard to guess where the song would play -- And a lot of people guessed for older, already existing areas. While I won't spoil which location specifically, I can at least tell you guys that these audio previews are NOT for old areas, but for new content in V13! So yeah, these are all songs that will play in areas you haven't seen before. Maybe it'll be fun to try thinking of what locations you'll be visiting that could have these songs playing in the background, hm? I won't be giving away any hints though, so have fun speculating on your own or in the comments!!

For now, I dip.

Until the next preview! o7