IT'S YOUR WEEKLY NEGATIVE REVERIE UPDATE and SOME OTHER JUNK

What a week! I switched back to working night shift, which honestly... hasn't taken that much of an adjustment. It comes with a few challenges, but honestly, I think I'm able to focus a lot more at night, since there are less distractions.

I started and finished reading Peter Watts Blindsight, finally! I got the idea for the plot for Negative Reverie after listening to a book review of it, so I figured it was time to finally go in and actually read it. 10/10 book. Maybe the best science fiction I've ever read. I started the sequel (or "sidequel" as some people call it) Echopraxia this morning. I'm all of 5 pages in and it's already incredible. Looking forward to that.

OK, Negative Reverie...

FREEDOM HEIGHTS TILEMAP

I've got the tilemaps for the second chapter of the game completed! The maps themselves haven't been added to get game yet, but the graphics are there! I may go ahead and just keep drawing the other areas, rather than actually build each one out for now... I'm undecided.

I'm pretty happy with how its looking, though.

ENEMIES

Drew out some new enemies. Obviously, any modern hero worth their salt is going to be an enemy of cars far and wide, so I had to make sure you get a chance to do your civic duty and rough 'em up.

Also... AI powered shopping cart for flavor.

BATTLE SYSTEM

Did a lot of work on the battle system. It's still not 100% functional, but a good chunk of it is there now. The name plates crack when you're KO'd, there are death animations for the enemies, the system tracks character stats for level up more intelligently, etc etc etc. I'm having a lot of fun working on it... so maybe I'll keep working on it this week.

MAP CHARACTERS

I took some time to make the player and party sprites always perfectly reflect the party order. A lot of this is just under-the-hood updates, but it'll make it a lot easier to do things like, allow the player to control different party members or NPCs during story scenes and not require having a character on screen during cutaways.

WHAT'S NEXT?

Well... I haven't decided yet, tbh. I'll probably open up Godot right after I finish posting this and get to work.... but IDK what I'm gonna focus on this week. HONESTLY, I've been wanting to completely rework how weapons work... but the more I think about it... the more I realize I don't have enough ideas for it... We'll just have to see!

ANYWAY...

My biggest thank you for continuing to support me! Stoked to have all these NIGHTTIME HOURS with which to do some real gamedev work! See y'all next week!!!