26/09/23 - StyxQuest v1.3 - Mapping (almost) Done!

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Wow. It's almost October! Time really flies!
Well, before we get into what I'v been working on since last post, how about a little life update? The festival was pretty fun and I met a lot of great people such as u m a m iand visited a few companies. Paris was...Paris. Cool artwork and tasty crepes but I almost got scammed a few times. No luck currently with finding a job in animation but I was able to speak with some companies who were able to give me pointers! I know what I need to do, but one small issue is I'm having to do new work in Blender (which I'm unfamiliar with) and I can only seem to do the work under very specific circumstances. I'll get there though! And lastly, I was fortunate enough to be part of LOFAM 5 Act 2! It's a fanmade album series with countless musicians and artists having been a part of it. I did cover art for The Imminently Deceased, Fugalanthequins, "Shred them to pieces", Caffeinated Jittering, Under A Starry Night Sky and Ace-celerando. With 100 tracks and about 6 hours worth of songs with tons of variety, I would recommend downloading it!
So what have I done since last time? Well! I've remade and implemented new maps for Mephitropilis and Sinner's Reach!

Mephitropolis (Right-click to view full size)
Left - Original layouts for Mephitropolis' areas.
Right - Newest versions of Mephitropolis' areas. The central and sewer maps have moving water, areas are more spacious thanks to parallax mapping. Definitely need to add more things in the Central map to make it more busy-looking - perhaps more NPCs?

Sinner's Reach (Right-click to view full size)
Left - The old Sinner's Reach maps, including a scrapped break room.
Right - The new Sinner's Reach maps. It's a big place, so key areas ought to be a bit bigger. There's also more consistency with the art style between maps; the old portal room map bugs me because of the pipes.

One thought that came to me last month was "It's rather easy to access the new final area with the new boss, but they're supposed to be super tough. It might be a bit jarring." So how do we fix this? But implementing a soft Hard Mode. It'll only apply to bosses (where it counts) and might make the fights more interesting. As of writing this, I've created redone fights for Belphegor, Beelzebub and AOS. Lilith won't be getting a fix due to the nature of her fight, and I'm still trying to consider what to do for Vole, Lucifer and Nisroch. The original final bosses will be untouched.
That aside, it'll also introduce new dialogue to NPCs and lead players towards the new ending (if they so desire).

With the amount of work remaining (as well as the job hunt and an upcoming trip) it seems rather unlikely that I'll be releasing the update before the end of the year. But I promise you this: it will be out sometime next year. Ideally before May.

List of things to work on:

• Fix events for redone maps
• Get someone to test combat
• Add more enemies to Sanguine Shores maps
• Remake minor maps
• Animate cutscenes (low prioity - assets are mostly made, work can wait towards the end of development)