Community announcement 08/03/2024

Hello,

I figured I would give  a quick update on the status of this game and future projects and explain why I haven't had any updates for the past 3 months.

I won't sugar coat it. its been hard to be motivated to finish this game. As most game projects go, they become more of a chore the more you work on them. My biggest hang ups is the model of Stable Diffusion I was using wasn't giving me the quality images that I wanted. I have spent about a month fine tuning a new preset for image production and passing the old images through it to get better quality and work on replacing the existing images with these. However, its a slow process as there is a lot of weird things with fingers and toes and faces that get distorted, so multiple passes are required and it takes time. I have probably put about another 14 hours or so into trying to update the images and am only about half way done, so that has become a bit of a chore. 

Next hang up, is that I want the game to be fun. I want more than just the random number generators I have now for altercations. I have been trying to get better at java and CSS to make more of a combat type interaction and integrating the berries into that. At first I wanted to do a Card matching game but that became a whole mess of code and slow as H E double hockey sticks.  The next one was a card based game, but that got into a matrix type spreadsheet for rock paper scissor type interactions. its still a possibility, but even with just 3 types of berries, abilities, etc. that is still 3^3 interactions (27) that need to be programmed and image generated. That's for 3 characters (27 * 3 =  81) and at this current moment 8 different enemies. that is now the 27 different interactions with 3 characters multiplied by 8 different enemies (81 * 8 =  648) 648!!! you see how fast that becomes a 2 year long project. so I have to figure out how to map the character, the enemy, and the interaction so that I don't have to create individual generations per interaction. That takes time and knowledge that I currently am learning. I am Learning Live2D animation to maybe do this in the future. 

Lastly, I would like to learn from this experience and I feel an obligation in the future to release full scale games. So I have also been working on a new title, but I want to release it in full all at once, not in periodic updates like I did here. And I want it to be available on multiple platforms (itch.io, F95, Android, iOS, etc.) and that is also taking time to learn. 

I am still working on this in my free time and I do plan to finish this game. I appreciate all of the patience and the great feedback, support, and general attitude towards my first project. I have learned way more than I ever thought I would doing that project, and its inspired me to learn new things. I learned Twine sugarcube, Java, CSS, and fine tuned my own AI image generation, audio, and more. I picked up Unity and built a tower defense game and flappy bird using online tutorials. I really am expanding my horizons and trying new things. Thanks again for all the patience and understanding. Hopefully this game will expand more, and I can get more learning out of this.

Thank you.