Alright, two releases to discuss before we have a progress report on top of that.
Bloodcrete: At long last, Travis Baldree has narrated another book in the series. I don't know what to expect, after so long a gap. If you have been waiting for this, please take a look, and leave reviews if possible.
TLS 1.1.2: It's out publicly! Go get it if you want to see new Eustrin or new scenes. Info on future TLS stuff coming before too long.
With those things said, I need to report on Omnipocalypse progress. There was a time when I was wondering if I'd be releasing three things this weekend, but that turned out to be impossible.
You remember what I said about Omnipocalypse being started to be a pure creation project for fun, keeping my creative juices flowing? Well, that was true for 2-2.5 months, but not anymore. As I get closer to release, it's just one technical problem after another and approximately 0% fun.
Thing is, there's a difference between some understandable jank or placeholders, and an experience that's actually unfun for the player. I am doing my best to get version 0.1.0 into enjoyable shape for those who want to try it, so that the overall spirit of the project comes through, if a little roughly. But the process has descended into a quagmire of technical issues and it suuucks.
Some of these things I'm getting fixed on my own now. Others I hope will be fixed when I replace the current systems with their final versions. But ultimately I think I'm going to need help on this, one way or another.
This may be an unusual use of the term, but I feel this build is burdened with a fair amount of tech debt. I intend to press forward to get this first build out, both because that will feel healthy for me and because I'll get a ton of useful information from the playtesting. But afterward, I will need to spend some time paying that debt down so that going forward this project has a better development environment.
I actually have a save that I've run through from beginning to the "end" of content, so it's not like I've done nothing or finishing is still vaguely in the future. But with a game design like this, there's all kinds of content that won't be seen in a given loop (or can't be seen on a first run at all). There are entire areas/dungeons that are hopefully done but haven't even been tested once.
I need to get this done and released, so I hope it will be Friday. This build should be a solid hour of content for most players, I'm hoping (less if you have zero interest in seeing loop variations, potentially more if you hunt them). It will not be the final version of this content by a long shot, but I hope it will be a fun version.