Crisis Point: Extinction - Hentai Metroidvania (2019 public demo available now!)

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, please consider supporting us!)


Hey everyone. Not too much to write about this week on the development front; I've just about finished catching up on implementing all the animations Orex has been working on, and Orex is nearly done with the final Edovex BE animation, so fans of the Edovex have a lot to look forward to in v0.45. Red is making solid progress on the Azulisk CG, and I'm nearly done writing it, so we should hopefully have a preview to share on that CG soon.

This week wasn't super great for me, my sleep troubles have been flaring up on top of everything else, but I'm doing my best to keep things moving. I'm mostly working on writing, between the Azulisk CG and story scripts, rather than actual in-engine development. It's equally important work, but sometimes it doesn't feel like it matters nearly as much? I'm not sure why, maybe just because it's not directly creating content for you guys to play. Either way, it needs to get done, and I'm slowly making progress on it.

The good news is that my doctor's appointment is happening this week. I have no clue what exactly the appointment will entail, or what the results will be. I think it's very likely that this first visit will just be information gathering, so to speak, and I won't get any sort of treatment/medication until a followup visit, but it's been so long since I've seen a doctor of any kind that I'm just not sure. Either way, though, I'm equal parts anxious and excited to finally get the ball rolling.



Alright, this is all going to be personal stuff from here on out, and it's a bit of a read, so don't feel like you HAVE to read it, but I want to get some thoughts out. Don't worry, there's nothing bad here, but it's stuff that's been on my mind for years and I think writing it all out will do me some good.

I've been relatively secretive about my health and mental issues for most of this game's development, and to be honest it still feels a little weird to be open about it sometimes. There's always a worry in the back of my mind that it'll come across like I'm making excuses, or trying to pander for sympathy points, but the more I think about it.. honestly, I think I'm okay with it if some people think that's the case. I can't be likable or trustworthy to everybody, and I'll run myself ragged if I try to do that. I look around at all of my peers and friends in the NSFW game dev space, and seeing the kinds of struggles they're going through behind-the-scenes is such an odd experience. As friends, we share our struggles more openly and we support each other as best we can; but as creators, we often hide that away in favor of having a sparkly clean public image where we work tirelessly, 12+ hours a day, to create content. To both newcomers and veterans in game dev, myself included, it creates an immense pressure to "keep up" and probably contributes heavily to a lot of the mental issues and depression that people like me suffer from.

Chasing productivity can be valuable, but when it starts to come at the cost of your health - whether mental, physical, or otherwise - is that really worth it? Some people can work 12 hours a day and still have a healthy life outside of it; heck, some days even I can put in 14+ hours and feel great after.. but other days even getting 2 hours of solid work out of myself feels like pulling teeth. And the thing I keep needing to tell myself is, that's okay. If I look at my productivity on a daily basis, days like those feel like the end of the world, and it quickly devolves into a spiral of guilt and depression and just general awfulness. But looking back on the things I've created, with the help of so many other amazing and talented people, and the support of all of you unbelievably kind folks supporting us both on and off Patreon, how can I justify feeling anything but proud? CPE is an amazing game, and just because it's taking longer than I'd like doesn't take away from that. If anything, the fact that it exists despite all of my issues says so much. I could've just given up, during all of those depressive episodes, but no matter how much they try to take me down, I've always gotten back up, every single time, even if it took me a while to find the strength.

The point I really want to make is, if me being more open about my mental health and struggle to be productive can make even one other person understand that it's okay to struggle sometimes, and you can still make a successful game even if the productivity just.. won't come out some days, or weeks, or even months, then I think that's worth it, even if it makes me seem untrustworthy to some folks. Creating things is already hard, and we don't need to make it any harder on ourselves by being unrealistic about what we can accomplish; everyone works at their own pace, and someone who takes the time to understand and respect their own pace, rather than beating themselves over the head because they can't be faster, will ultimately come out ahead of someone who burns themselves out because of the pressure and ends up quitting.



That was kind of a long-winded tangent, and I thank you if you bothered to read any of it. I'll try not to apologize for not having a better weekly update than this; I do that a lot, and it's probably not a healthy mindset to have. So instead of being sorry, I'm going to be thankful instead; I cannot possibly overstate how much it means to us that you give us the time and support we need to not only work on the game, but to work on ourselves, so that we can become better people and better developers and deliver the game that you all deserve.

Thank you all, so much. <3 We'll see you in next week's update. Hopefully it will be an exciting one!

 

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, please consider supporting us!)

Hey everybody. Gonna be another small one this week, and not as exciting as I hoped it would be last week; BUT there is good news, with hopefully more coming on the horizon!

So first off, for work I continued to work on stuff outside of the game, mostly writing; I've been struggling most with opening the engine and actually programming/implementing things, but writing has been a little easier to get myself to do, so I'm letting my focus stay there for the time. The Azulisk CG script is nearly done, and I have a few cutscenes/gameplay dialogues written out for v0.45 as well. I'm going to try and have all the conversations I want for v0.45 finished by next weekend, so I can send them to our VAs and give them plenty of time to record.

Aside from me, Orex finished up the final Edovex BE H-scene and that's all ready for implementation now. He'll be starting work on more H-scenes now, since we still have plenty to update or improve. Red is waiting on me to finalize the Azulisk script so he can finish the related CG, so I'll be trying to finish that up first thing this next week.



For a more personal update: last week I mentioned I had a doctor's visit scheduled for this week, but I wasn't entirely sure what to expect out of it. Unfortunately, it did end up being a pretty basic visit; the doctor I saw wasn't one of their behavioral health specialists, so the visit ended up being more of a general thing and getting care started, since I also had some physical health concerns to bring up in addition to my mental health issues. I'll be getting an appointment scheduled with one of their mental health specialists soon, and they estimated 1-2 weeks for that, but I'll find out an exact day soon.

Despite the appointment being less of a decisive thing than I had hoped, I'm not surprised by it, and it was a positive experience overall; I've met with some doctors in the past who seemed in a hurry to get me out of the door and didn't really give a shit, and I didn't get that vibe this time. Everyone was very kind, and it seemed like they actually care about their patients, so I think we made a good choice. Despite the lack of forward movement from this one visit (which again was unsurprising, depression and anxiety can't be cured at the drop of a hat), I do honestly feel a little better already - knowing that something is finally happening helps, even if I have to wait a little bit longer. I've already dealt with crippling mental issues for at least half my life, so "a little bit longer" sounds pretty okay compared to the "indefinitely" I was looking at before now.

I'm excited for this next week, I'm still rocky at times but I feel overall more positive right now than I have in the past month at least, and I'm hoping to finally be able to get some good work done. In the meantime though, I know this is yet another low-content update, and I can't stress enough how grateful I am to you all for putting up with it; I hate delivering lackluster updates, but you've all been so overwhelmingly kind and understanding, and it really has helped me not beat myself up too much over this. As much as I wish I could flip a switch and be okay again, mental health doesn't work that way, and you've all given me the space to deal with what has been the worst depressive flareup I've had since my father passed a few years ago, and I truly cannot thank you enough for that. You're the best group of supporters a creator like me could ask for, and if I have any one dominant feeling right now, it's that I can't wait to get better so I can make you guys better stuff than ever before.

 

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, you can try a free demo of the game on our itch.io by clicking here! If you enjoy the game, please consider supporting us on Patreon! We couldn't make this game without our supporters!)

Hey everyone. This week was a mixture of both great, and ehh. The bad news, which I'll get out of the way first, is that the work side of things was the 'ehh' part; I didn't get as much writing as I wanted done, BUT I did have the most productive day I've had in over a month, so it wasn't a complete loss! I managed to take a script from about 50% to finished in a single day, which may not sound like much, but it feels like a lot right now, so I'm trying to stay positive.

Orex is also still banging out animations for me to implement once I'm fully back in action. This week he finished up a few things; a clothed version of Alicia's masturbation animation, a "death" transition into said scene for when Alicia runs out of HP in gameplay, and an update to the regular (non-BE) Edovex H-scene.

For this H-scene update, in addition to the obvious anatomy and shading improvements, Orexius went out of his way to update the animation from 4 to 6 frames total, so it's a huge improvement over the old scene if you ask me.


So, now for the GOOD news! I posted last week that it sounded like it would be 1-2 weeks before I could see a behavioral doctor to talk about my mental health, and that seemed to be the case more and more, because they didn't end up calling me back. They said that might happen and if they didn't I should call them back, so I was planning on doing that (and was putting it off because phone anxiety, bleh), but I got a call from them for a separate topic entirely regarding my physical health, and while I was already wrapped up in a phone call I asked them about scheduling an appointment with a behavioral doc.

Apparently, she was the correct person to ask about it, because she managed to get me scheduled for a telehealth call with someone just two days later. That call has already come and gone, and I have officially been diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and ADD - all of which I already pretty much knew I had, but, it's still a weird feeling to be officially diagnosed. Still, getting some confirmation is nice, and it's a good reminder that I'm not just lazy or insane, since my brain likes to try and convince me I am all the time.

So now that I've been officially diagnosed, a few things are happening. First, the doctor I spoke to is going to look into therapists and get me a list. I'll be meeting with her again in about a month, so I'll likely be starting weekly therapy in late July/early August. I also have an appointment scheduled for July 1st with someone who handles medications/prescriptions, and that's when I'll be getting medication to help counter all of this in the short-term, while the therapy helps to address the root of the problem. All this is to say, things are really looking up right now! I still have a bit of waiting to do (and by extension, I still have to ask for all of your patience for just a little while longer), but the ball has started rolling now, at long last.


I still haven't quite internalized that all of this is happening. I've been dealing with mental health issues for so long, it's just become a "normal" part of my life, something that never really went away even on the best of days. Heck, even now in the process of getting help, the ~24 hours leading up to all of these appointments always fills me with crippling anxiety and I can barely bring myself to do anything. It's such a big part of my existence that I can't imagine a life where I don't have all of these issues.. and yet, because of all of you, I can actually afford to take the steps necessary to make it happen. It's going to be a long road to fixing myself completely, but getting started is always the hardest part, so things can only get better from here. I don't know if I'll ever be able to truly thank you guys enough for this, and all the other things you've done for us, but as soon as I'm able, I'm gonna do my damn best to try!

 

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, you can try a free demo of the game on our itch.io by clicking here! If you enjoy the game, please consider supporting us on Patreon! We couldn't make this game without our supporters!)

Hey everyone. Gonna be another simple update this week (how many times have I said that by now), but things are proceeding as smoothly as we could hope right now, all things considered.

I got about the same amount of writing done this week as last week, so no major improvements on that front, but no backtracking either, so I'm happy with that. I'm nearly done with all of the scripts I wanted for v0.45, so I should be able to send them off to our VAs next week; I'm quickly running out of work I can do outside of the game engine, so fingers crossed I'll be able to get myself back to implementing stuff again soon.

I have my doctor's appointment this coming week where we'll be talking about medication (and presumably getting me on a prescription), so I'll finally be starting the road to improvement. It's not going to fix things right away, but it feels good to know that something is happening just around the corner. It doesn't feel like much has happened yet, since it's just been a few appointments and no actual therapy or medication yet, but the real starting point is just ahead and I have high hopes for the future.

Aside from me and my work, Orexius is nearly done with all of the Edovex's H-scenes; all of the new BE H-scenes have been done, and he updated the non-BE scene last week as well, which left him with the brand new Duo and Trio scenes this week. The Duo scene is done, and the Trio scene is well underway; after he's done with this, the Edovex's H-scene count will have risen from 1 scene to 6! Big day to be an Edovex fan After that, we have some gameplay QoL animations planned that I'm excited to talk about soon. They should make movement in CPE feel even smoother than before.

Red is also making great progress on the Azulisk CG. We had some issues with figuring parts of it out at first, but the rough edges have been smoothed over, and since v0.45 is delayed for an indeterminate amount of time (AKA until I get myself together), it should definitely be done in time. I'm really happy with the way it's turning out, and I hope you guys will like it too!


Alright, that's about all I have for this week. Sorry there's nothing to show; the Azulisk scene isn't quite ready for a preview yet, and I don't want to post yet another Edovex preview when we've already showed, what, 3 of them this update cycle? I have high hopes that I'll be able to get myself back to working in-engine soon, though, so the update can at least get closer to being completed.

Since this month is about to come to a close, and with it the "normal" deadline for v0.45 will be passing without an update coming out, I do want to remind everyone pledged that if you feel the need to stop pledging at any point, you WILL still get the next update once it releases! I always send the update out to anyone who pledged $10 USD at least once during the update's development, even if they're no longer pledged, so please don't feel like you have an obligation to stay so you can get your rewards, if you aren't comfortable with the speed of development right now! At the end of the day you guys are paying me to develop a game, and I harbor no ill will towards anyone who wishes to unpledge while I figure my mental health out and get things back on track.

That being said, to anyone who does stay pledged, you have my eternal gratitude - it's still blowing my mind that after all these years of dealing with depression, anxiety, impostor syndrome, self-doubt, and generally awful mental health, I can finally afford not only the money - but also the time - to see someone about it and try to figure myself out. It means more to me than I can possibly express that you guys have given me this chance, and I can't promise that I'll be able to fix things quickly, but I can promise I won't waste this chance; even if it takes some time, I'm gonna get through this and come out stronger than ever.

 

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, you can try a free demo of the game on our itch.io by clicking here! If you enjoy the game, please consider supporting us on Patreon! We couldn't make this game without our supporters!)

Hey everybody. Continuing the trend of short weekly updates, we have a short weekly update for you today.

To get it out of the way now, I didn't really get any work done this week. I spent a good amount of the week anxious as hell about my appointment, which is pretty much how all of the appointments have gone so far, and it makes it hard to get even regular around-the-house stuff done since my stomach is busy being figuratively twisted into a knot. I've always had anxiety problems with upcoming events, but I think COVID and the complete at-home isolation that came with it made it even worse, so that's fun. I'm so sorry I continuously have very little to deliver, as far as game news goes, but I'm trying my best to not feel too bad for it; you've all been so incredibly understanding and supportive that it's honestly helping me not feel like a complete piece of shit every waking moment like I usually do when updates are bad, so right now I'm just going to try and do what you've all been telling me to do, and focus on my mental health and getting better.

The good news on that front is that the appointment happened a few days ago, and I am now officially on an antidepressant. The medication they prescribed me is primarily an antidepressant, but it's often used to treat all 3 of my major mental health issues (depression, anxiety, ADD), so the doctor wanted to start here in the hopes that one medication + therapy would be enough and that I wouldn't need to worry about taking a veritable cocktail of pills every morning. I started taking it a few days ago, so obviously no effects yet, but the medication is known to start causing changes for some people in as little as a week, with on average 1.5-2 months for the full effects. No way to know yet if I'll feel the effects on the quicker side or if it'll take longer, but it's nice to know there's a possibility that I'll start to see some minor improvements soon. Even if it takes on the longer side, though, this is the first real, actionable change that's happened since I started pursuing mental health care, so it's honestly already a pretty big comfort to me. I'll probably be starting therapy late July/early August, and in the meantime I now have something real to do that could result in some positive change. I'm fully prepared for the possibility of this medication not being "the right one", but even if it's not, just knowing that things are finally in motion is already helping me out a bit.


Enough about me and my life, though; there's not too much game progress to talk about this week, but I do have one fun thing I want to show off that a few people have been asking for for a long time.

We're adding xrays/internal shots to CPE! Orexius has animated one for the Edovex H-scene (featuring double penetration in the trio scene), and we'll be using the base animation he created to go back and add them to all penetration H-scenes in the game. This will be a toggleable option, so if you don't like xrays in your porn then you'll be able to turn it off. We also do not plan on having oral xrays at the moment, just downstairs penetration. All of the xrays probably won't be done in time for v0.45, since there's plenty of other work for Orexius to do, so we'll be working on adding all of them over the next update or two.


Alright, that's it for this week. I've been saying thanks a lot lately, but it's because I truly mean it - not a lot of people in the USA are able to afford proper healthcare, and the only reason I'm able to finally start working on my life-long mental issues is because of all of you. It's not only the financial support, though, you've all been constantly cheering me on, giving advice, and reminding me that it's okay to take the time I need to figure all of this out. I probably won't ever have the words to thank you all properly, but I'll keep doing my best to work on my issues so we can keep on delivering you not only this game, but many more after it. Thanks again, everyone, and I'll see you with another update next week. <3

 

[Anon42]

Hey dudes, sorry about not posting last week's update here, I wasn't in a particularly good state at the time and I forgot to post anywhere but Patreon. I'm gonna go ahead and post both last week's and this week's updates at once here, so you can read them both if you missed either.


7-10-2021

Hey everyone. This weekly update is going to be very short, apologies to anyone who was hoping for more.

Orexius is nearly done with the Edovex trio and xray cumshot (we'll be posting something about this on Discord soon, to get feedback from our Patrons there), and Red is progressing smoothly on the Azulisk scene; we have a few changes left, but the character art is nearly done, and then it's just background and final tweaks and it'll be done.

For me, this week was... rough, to say the least. A combination of the depression and side effects from starting medication, probably. My sleep has been terrible, my mood is by far the worst it's been, sometimes even just feeding myself has been a struggle. I'm sorry there's not anything from me in terms of development this week, I'm just trying my best to get through these side effects right now. They said 2-4 weeks for side effects to subside and start feeling the benefits, so hopefully there will be some improvement next update, but we'll have to wait and see. Sorry again there's not a longer update, I really appreciate all of your patience while I'm dealing with this.





7-17-2021

Hey everyone, gonna be another quick update this week because I don't have too much to talk about. I took this week off again, and the good news is that it seems like I'm over the worst of the side effects. That first week was absolutely miserable, one of the worst mental/emotional states I've ever been in, but this last week I've been feeling pretty much neutral, which is a big step up. I'm not sure if I'm actually feeling the positive effects yet or if I just feel good because I'm no longer feeling terrible - "neutral" is fantastic after hitting such a low point, after all - but I guess it doesn't really matter which? I felt pretty good for the latter half of this week and that's what matters. Hopefully it only continues to get better from here.

I have a check-in with my mental health doc in a few days, and I believe that's when we'll be talking about therapy options, so I should be getting a therapy schedule going soon. I can't say I'm really excited about it, but not because I have anything against therapy, quite the opposite - my problem is that appointments of any kind (like my upcoming check-in, or something like a flight) give me horrific anxiety, especially the day before the appointment. It's bad enough that it feels physically painful sometimes, and the thought of having an appointment every single week sounds like my own personal brand of hell. On the other side of the coin, I've always wanted to go to therapy and I'm so glad I can finally afford to do it, so it's a weird conflicted mix of the two feelings. I brought this up with my doctor when I talked with them the first time, and they suggested the idea that it'll get easier the more often it happens, which is definitely true in my experience - I had frequent chiropractic appointments for a while after my car accident a few years ago, and I don't remember having issues with that - so I'm just going to have to power through the anxiety for the time being. If it doesn't get better (either on its own or with the medication I'm on now), then I can talk about it with them further and try to figure something out. For now it's just another hurdle to overcome.


Anyway, that's all I have to talk about regarding me right now. As far as CPE goes, there's not too much to say since I took the week off again - though I'm going to sincerely try to get at least SOME work done again this week, since my mental state is on the upswing at the moment. In the meantime, Orexius and Red are still hard at work; Red is continuing work on the Azulisk CG in his limited free time, and we've got a WIP background now, so one step closer to completion. Orex finished up all of the Edovex animations this week, including the xray and xray climax animations, so he'll be moving on to more xrays for other enemies, and some gameplay QoL animations I wanted to experiment with. I'll have more to share on that soon, once we get the chance to tinker with it a bit.

And that's about it for this week's update. Thank you for reading, and for continuing to overload me with kind and supportive messages; I don't respond to all of them and I'm sorry for that, I'm not great at socializing and putting myself out there, but every single one of your messages truly means the world to me. It's easy as a content creator to assume that people just care about the content and not the person behind it, but everything you've all done and said since I opened up about my depression has proven that that couldn't be further from the truth. It's yet another reason for me to want to get better, so I can make sure your kindness and encouragement isn't wasted!

 

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, you can try a free demo of the game on our itch.io by clicking here! If you enjoy the game, please consider supporting us on Patreon! We couldn't make this game without our supporters!)

Hey everyone. Yet another pretty short update this week, though there is a pretty rad animation Orex made this week that I'll be sharing.

First off, my personal week. It was a pretty decent one. I didn't manage to get any work done like I was hoping, but I'm trying to be alright with that - even though I've had a lot of time "away from work", so to speak, most of it up until now has been spent in a depressive state, so it hasn't exactly been restful. This week I felt pretty decent (aside from the continued extreme anxiety when I have an appointment coming up), but once I tried to start working this week and was still struggling with it, I also realized that I only just started feeling decent again, so I figured giving myself a bit more of a break would be a good idea.

So aside from the lack of work, I had another meeting with my psychiatrist this week. We talked about how things have been going for me, what changes I want to try and work towards, and she gave me a list of therapists to look into. I'll be doing some research this week to try and decide who I want to work with out of the 5 options she gave me; I'm not sure how long it'll be after I decide who to go for before I actually start having therapy sessions, but in the meantime, my psychiatrist worked with me to set up a list of small goals for me to accomplish before I meet with her again in a month, to help me get out of the stagnation of my comfort zone in a healthy, sustainable way. She continues to be a wonderful person to work with; when we were figuring out those goals, I was a bit overambitious with some of the things I wanted to accomplish, and she was quick to pull me back from those when necessary. After she discussed that, and why she pulled me back from it, I'm starting to get the feeling that "expecting too much to quickly" has been one of my key struggles with making positive changes in my life; I expect a lot out of myself, and when I fail to meet those expectations, I struggle to find the motivation to keep trying.

I'm going to keep taking it easy for a little while longer; I plan on trying to do some small work on personal for-fun projects, and if that goes well and I'm feeling productive then I'll try working on CPE too, but I don't want to force myself just yet. It still hasn't been a full month since I started taking the antidepressants, so it's entirely possible the effects will become even more pronounced over the next week or two. I have another appointment with the doctor who prescribed my medication very early next month; this medicine definitely seems to be helping with my depression, but so far I don't feel like it's doing anything for my ADHD/anxiety, so if that continues I'll probably talk to her about trying out adding another medication on top of the one I'm taking. The one I'm on now is only approved for depression, it just also has the side effect of often helping people with ADHD/anxiety, so it was a 50/50 shot whether it would help me with those too, and not a big surprise if it doesn't.


Anyway, that's about all I have regarding myself this week. Before I end this post, though, Orexius has been working on learning some special effects animation (which was previously one of the few remaining animation/art things I still handled personally), and he took the time this week to go back and animate a new explosion effect for the Seeker Mines you encounter in the game's underwater sections.

For comparison's sake, I grabbed an older gif showing the OLD version of the mine's explosion animation:

And here's the NEW animation:

Obviously the new animation lacks the ingame context, but hopefully you're as big of a fan of it as I am! After seeing this, I'm pretty stoked to have Orex go back and update some of our other special effects to be fancier. Much like my character animation work from the early days of CPE, it wasn't bad per se, but my animations and effects tended to be pretty basic. I'm not an animator, and there's a level of quality and flair Orex brings to the presentation that I have a difficult time reaching when I do artwork. Basically what I'm saying is, Orexius is awesome.


Alright, that's it for me for this week. Thank you all for reading, and for continuing to be so supportive and kind! I've said it before, but all of your kind words and reassurances really do help me to not feel so guilt-ridden when things don't go according to plan. After talking to my psychatrist, I'm going to try and put a little less pressure on myself, and try to find victory in even the smaller things, so I can work towards a healthier relationship with my work and life. Thank you again for reading, and we'll see you again in next week's update!

 

[Lone Wolf115]

I love the game keep the great work and take care of yourself and same goes for your team.

I haven't played it recently because my dad pawned my computer so I'm on my phone.

 

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, you can try a free demo of the game on our itch.io by clicking here! If you enjoy the game, please consider supporting us on Patreon! We couldn't make this game without our supporters!)

Hey everyone, sorry I missed the update yesterday. To be honest, I didn't even realize it was Saturday, my mental clock is super off right now. Gonna be more or less another personal update this week, though I do have an update to that explosion animation from last week! We got some feedback and Orexius decided to tweak it some more, and now it looks even cooler than before. I'll have that later in the post, so feel free to skip there if you don't want to read personal stuff.

I've been doing a little work on personal projects like I mentioned last update, and the good news is I haven't forgotten how to program lmao, so that's reassuring. Right now my biggest struggle is just, getting myself to start working in the first place. There are so many days where I'll wake up feeling ready to work, get ready for the day and head down to my computer, sit at my desk, and then just kinda.. freeze up. My motivation slips away completely as soon as I can actually put thoughts into action, and it's immeasurably frustrating.

I have an appointment with my medicine doctor this week, so I'll be discussing my thoughts on the medicine I'm on now with her; I think I've talked about it before, but basically it feels like it's definitely helping with my depression, but it hasn't done anything for the anxiety/ADD - which isn't surprising, since depression is the only one of my symptoms it's clinically approved to treat. It often helps patients with the other two things, but not always. It certainly hasn't been a magical "happy pill" or anything like that, but it's kind of amazing how much of a difference it makes day-to-day. Before, when something bad happened on any given day, it would typically ruin my entire day. I couldn't pick myself out of that emotional slump until I slept and basically had a hard reset. Now that I'm taking medication though, of course I still have bad days sometimes, and I still get sad sometimes, but it doesn't seem to consume me in the way that it used to. I'll take an hour to myself, sometimes more sometimes less, and then I'll be okay again. Basically, I feel like this medication has just allowed my brain to remain at a "neutral" state in a way that I just plain wasn't able to do before.

So, once my appointment comes, my core goal is to talk to her about ADD medication options. I know that the "getting started" problem is a common one with ADD, and it's been one of my main struggling points with developing CPE as a whole, not just in these last few months. It's kinda weird, as an adult I basically "forgot" I was diagnosed with ADD as a kid, because I haven't been treated for it in any way for the past ~15 years. I didn't literally forget, but I never considered it at all when thinking about all of the things I've struggled with over the years. Instead, I just convinced myself that I wasn't trying hard enough, which is.. just about the most unhealthy mindset possible, especially for neurodivergent minds. This appointment is very early in the week, so I might have something to report by the next update, with any luck - some ADD medications start working immediately, so it will depend on what she puts me on.


Anyway, that's enough personal stuff for this week. Orexius has been working on more xray animations, as well as updating all of the Underwater Mine animations (not just the explosion). He's also working on an alternate Ledge Grab animation, for ledges where Alicia doesn't have a foothold, since the current animation looks a little silly in those cases. The only animation I'm showing off this week is the updated explosion, though:

The effect from last week is still there, with a few minor tweaks, but there's another layer on top that should make the effect read much more as an "underwater" explosion specifically.

Alright, that's all I have for this week. Hopefully you're not tired of hearing me say thank you yet, because - seriously - thank you all so much for sticking with us. I know CPE development is in a bad place right now, but it means the world to me that you guys are giving me the time I need to deal with all this. I feel like I'm finally on track to get back into development soon, especially if ADD medication works out. There's a LOT to do once I get back to it, so don't expect another playable update to come out very soon even if I do get going right away, but if all goes well then CPE development should be a lot more consistent once I finally am back behind the wheel. Here's hoping we have something good to share next week!

 

[Lone Wolf115]

Is it possible to port the game to android/apk, or the game engine not built for it? If not then it is what it is.
Keep up the awesome work and take care of yourself.

 

[Anon42]

Is it possible to port the game to android/apk, or the game engine not built for it? If not then it is what it is.
Keep up the awesome work and take care of yourself.

We're not doing an Android port, sorry. A port is theoretically possible, but it's not as simple as just exporting it for Android, lots of code would need to change to support the platform. The game would also control terribly on a touch screen, so the only people who would be able to play it are those with compatible controllers, and that's just too small of a group for us to spend our limited development resources on it

 

[Lone Wolf115]

We're not doing an Android port, sorry. A port is theoretically possible, but it's not as simple as just exporting it for Android, lots of code would need to change to support the platform. The game would also control terribly on a touch screen, so the only people who would be able to play it are those with compatible controllers, and that's just too small of a group for us to spend our limited development resources on it

Ahh ok I understand that there's a lot of work for that it makes sense that the small screen would make it harder to play I'll just have to wait until I get a computer that can do all the things I'll want to do.

 

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, you can try a free demo of the game on our itch.io by clicking here! If you enjoy the game, please consider supporting us on Patreon! We couldn't make this game without our supporters!)

Hey guys, sorry I missed Saturday again - I swear my mental clock is stuck a full day off right now and I keep not realizing what day of the week it is. This will be an entirely personal update, pretty much; I don't really have anything to share on the development side of things. Orexius has been working on more xray animations, and I'm still trying to get my mojo back, so this will just be an update on me and my health.

So to start off, I had my appointment with my medication doc this week. My main concern was, of course, getting ADD medication, and after going through all my options, we ended up settling on one of the few non-stimulant medications available. While she was doing my checkup, she noticed I have a very high resting heart rate, around ~115, when the average adult should be between 60-100. I asked her if it was because of how out of shape I am, and she said that just being out of shape shouldn't be enough to make my resting heart rate that high, so there's probably some underlying cause there in addition to my poor health. She wants me to get an EKG, but she wasn't sure what the cost of that was, so she said she would find out how much it would cost me and let me know at our next appointment. I do plan on getting insurance once I start seeing a therapist, so I can find an insurance plan that works with both my doctor and my therapist, so worst case scenario I can wait until after I have that to get the EKG if it's too expensive out of pocket. In the meantime, because of the high heart rate, she's not comfortable putting me on any stimulant medications; combining a stimulant with the antidepressant I'm on can sometimes make people jittery, and she said it could be potentially dangerous before we know what's going on with my heart rate. Thus, the non-stimulant.

The unfortunate part is that the stimulants are the ones that tend to work immediately. The medication I started on, being a non-stimulant, is like the antidepressant in that it takes a while to start working - pretty much the exact same timeframe, too, 4-8 weeks for the full effects. I won't know for a few weeks if it's helping with my ADD or not, and until we figure out what's going on with my heart, I won't be able to try any of the stimulant varieties. I've been on this new pill for most of this week, and the good news is I'm not getting horrible side effects like I did with the antidepressant. I got really nauseous one afternoon, but that's about it, and laying down for a while thankfully shook it off.


The one piece of good news I can relay about Crisis Point is that, while I haven't been actively working on the game in-engine, I have been spending a lot more time thinking about/mentally planning the game lately. I can tell my mental state is getting considerably better, both because of the antidepressant and because I've been trying out some new hobbies lately to try and refresh myself. This was a REALLY busy and stressful week for me, but I find myself able to handle stress better than I used to, so I'm still feeling pretty okay despite that. I wish I had gotten myself to work on CPE this week, but my motivation feels like it's coming back slowly but surely, and I'm confident that whether or not this ADD medication works, the coming weeks will have me back at my work desk - maybe not at full speed yet, but I'm positive that I'm going to feel up to making progress again soon.

Seriously, everyone, thank you so much for putting up with this hiatus for such a long time. Even though we still have some content coming in from Orex, I'm the main workforce behind CPE, and I'm sure having the game stall for so long is just as frustrating for you as it is for me. I say this every week, but I really can't thank you all enough for allowing me to put myself above the game for a while. I've been pushing my mental health aside for years so I could focus on the game, and I'm sure that's part of how it got to a boiling point like this. I may not be fully back in action yet, but with my mental health steadily climbing back up again, I'm just grateful that my unhealthy mental habits didn't push me so far that there was no coming back. As far as I'm concerned, I've gotta have the best fans in the world, and I can't wait to get back to delivering you guys the content you all deserve.

 

[Lone Wolf115]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, you can try a free demo of the game on our itch.io by clicking here! If you enjoy the game, please consider supporting us on Patreon! We couldn't make this game without our supporters!)

Hey guys, sorry I missed Saturday again - I swear my mental clock is stuck a full day off right now and I keep not realizing what day of the week it is. This will be an entirely personal update, pretty much; I don't really have anything to share on the development side of things. Orexius has been working on more xray animations, and I'm still trying to get my mojo back, so this will just be an update on me and my health.

So to start off, I had my appointment with my medication doc this week. My main concern was, of course, getting ADD medication, and after going through all my options, we ended up settling on one of the few non-stimulant medications available. While she was doing my checkup, she noticed I have a very high resting heart rate, around ~115, when the average adult should be between 60-100. I asked her if it was because of how out of shape I am, and she said that just being out of shape shouldn't be enough to make my resting heart rate that high, so there's probably some underlying cause there in addition to my poor health. She wants me to get an EKG, but she wasn't sure what the cost of that was, so she said she would find out how much it would cost me and let me know at our next appointment. I do plan on getting insurance once I start seeing a therapist, so I can find an insurance plan that works with both my doctor and my therapist, so worst case scenario I can wait until after I have that to get the EKG if it's too expensive out of pocket. In the meantime, because of the high heart rate, she's not comfortable putting me on any stimulant medications; combining a stimulant with the antidepressant I'm on can sometimes make people jittery, and she said it could be potentially dangerous before we know what's going on with my heart rate. Thus, the non-stimulant.

The unfortunate part is that the stimulants are the ones that tend to work immediately. The medication I started on, being a non-stimulant, is like the antidepressant in that it takes a while to start working - pretty much the exact same timeframe, too, 4-8 weeks for the full effects. I won't know for a few weeks if it's helping with my ADD or not, and until we figure out what's going on with my heart, I won't be able to try any of the stimulant varieties. I've been on this new pill for most of this week, and the good news is I'm not getting horrible side effects like I did with the antidepressant. I got really nauseous one afternoon, but that's about it, and laying down for a while thankfully shook it off.


The one piece of good news I can relay about Crisis Point is that, while I haven't been actively working on the game in-engine, I have been spending a lot more time thinking about/mentally planning the game lately. I can tell my mental state is getting considerably better, both because of the antidepressant and because I've been trying out some new hobbies lately to try and refresh myself. This was a REALLY busy and stressful week for me, but I find myself able to handle stress better than I used to, so I'm still feeling pretty okay despite that. I wish I had gotten myself to work on CPE this week, but my motivation feels like it's coming back slowly but surely, and I'm confident that whether or not this ADD medication works, the coming weeks will have me back at my work desk - maybe not at full speed yet, but I'm positive that I'm going to feel up to making progress again soon.

Seriously, everyone, thank you so much for putting up with this hiatus for such a long time. Even though we still have some content coming in from Orex, I'm the main workforce behind CPE, and I'm sure having the game stall for so long is just as frustrating for you as it is for me. I say this every week, but I really can't thank you all enough for allowing me to put myself above the game for a while. I've been pushing my mental health aside for years so I could focus on the game, and I'm sure that's part of how it got to a boiling point like this. I may not be fully back in action yet, but with my mental health steadily climbing back up again, I'm just grateful that my unhealthy mental habits didn't push me so far that there was no coming back. As far as I'm concerned, I've gotta have the best fans in the world, and I can't wait to get back to delivering you guys the content you all deserve.

You have to find time for your self, and relax, focus as little on the game's development as you can and do something that can help you reset in some way.

 

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, you can try a free demo of the game on our itch.io by clicking here! If you enjoy the game, please consider supporting us on Patreon! We couldn't make this game without our supporters!)

Hey everyone, sorry there was no update last week! I wasn't intending to skip it, it just sorta happened - you ever have that problem where you mean to respond to a message from someone, but you forget, and then hours later it feels weirdly late and awkward to respond, so you wait more, and ultimately end up not responding at all? It's that sorta thing. I really need to work on that lol, another thing to bring up with the eventual therapist.

So the new medication, the non-stimulant ADD pill, hasn't really made much of a difference for me unfortunately - I haven't felt any side effects really, but also no real benefits. Some basic googling tells me that non-stimulant medications tend to be much less effective at treating ADD, so I'm not too surprised by it, it just means I need to get that EKG done so we can figure out if taking a stimulant would be safe for me.

I haven't really done any work yet, but there has been one.. let's call it interesting.. development, that doesn't really pertain to CPE itself but will be relevant for my future games. It won't really change anything on your end as players, but the engine that I work with recently announced they're shifting their pricing model, and instead of being one-time purchases, they're going subscription-only. Personally, I can't stand subscription-only business models for programs, especially not ones you have to use for your job, so basically I'm ditching it and moving to a new engine lmao. CPE will be finished in the current engine, so it's not going to affect that - they're honoring all previous permanent licenses, so nothing is changing for me in the immediate future - but when they inevitably release a new version of the engine it'll be subscription-only, and I ain't dealing with that. I've been tinkering with Godot a bit the past week, and it's super promising, so I'm strongly leaning towards changing over to Godot for future games. It's completely free and open source, so there's no risk of them pulling shit like this in the future.

Anyway, aside from the engine stuff and the medicine not really helping, things have been going pretty well thankfully. I've been trying to cook a little more and eat a little healthier (key word: a little), and once Puffernutter's ankle heals (she got a pretty bad twisted ankle about a week ago), we plan on starting up exercise again. I still feel bad about not getting anything done for CPE, but it's felt good to focus on real life for a bit, now that my mental state has evened out a lot more.

CPE hasn't been completely idle, though; Orexius has been powering through more and more xray animations, and we now have xrays for the tentacles, warped sentries, scientists, and poison alraune. Red has officially finished up the Azulisk CG, too. I still haven't sent scripts off to our VAs yet, so I plan on doing the little remaining script work I have over this next week, so I can send it to them and give them time to record. I meant to do that several weeks ago, but yeah, things weren't going so great several weeks ago. I have a friend visiting from out of town this week, so I'll be spending some time with them, but they're not going to be here 24/7 so I'll definitely have time to do a bit of writing.

I also have two doctors' appointments this week, one of which is a followup with my medication doctor, so I'll be able to find out if I can afford that EKG or not. Even if I can't afford it now, I'll be able to in the near future - I finally picked out a therapist and sent them an appointment request this week, though it was only a few days ago so I haven't heard back yet. Knowing that I'll be seeing a therapist weekly, I intend on getting on insurance as soon as the enrollment period opens. Irritatingly, one of the enrollment periods just closed like.. a week ago, so it'll be a while before I can sign up for that, but in the worst case scenario I'll be able to afford the EKG once I get that going. Because of the nature of insurance and deductibles and shit, I plan on going crazy with medical care in 2022, and trying to get all sorts of my issues figured out. I haven't really talked about any of it, but I have loads of minor physical problems in addition to the mental ones; it's all stuff I've learned to live with, but it would be lovely if I could sort it out, so that'll be a big goal for next year.


Alright, I've rambled just about enough for two weeks worth of personal updates, huh? Sorry again about missing last week, I'll try not to let that happen again in the future. Thank you all so much for continuing to read these updates, even when they're not really about the game! Sometimes it's easy to forget how many people are following my work, since comments are usually pretty quiet when things are going well, so I really appreciate all the comments and well wishes you guys have been sending me regularly. It makes this whole thing feel like it matters a lot more, and has me looking forward to the day when I can not only get back to work, but can do that work better than I ever could in the past when I was struggling with all this. See you all again in next week's update!

 

[Lone Wolf115]

Alright, I've rambled just about enough for two weeks worth of personal updates, huh? Sorry again about missing last week, I'll try not to let that happen again in the future. Thank you all so much for continuing to read these updates, even when they're not really about the game! Sometimes it's easy to forget how many people are following my work, since comments are usually pretty quiet when things are going well, so I really appreciate all the comments and well wishes you guys have been sending me regularly. It makes this whole thing feel like it matters a lot more, and has me looking forward to the day when I can not only get back to work, but can do that work better than I ever could in the past when I was struggling with all this. See you all again in next week's update!

The game will only prosper and be good if the developer is well, don't worry about missing the update life is unpredictable and on that note, you do what you need to do.

 

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, you can try a free demo of the game on our itch.io by clicking here! If you enjoy the game, please consider supporting us on Patreon! We couldn't make this game without our supporters!)

Hey all, gonna be another entirely personal update this week. My week was a lot busier than I realized it would be, between the two separate appointments (and the anxiety that came with them) and my visiting friend, who I thankfully got to spend a lot more time with than I expected. They were visiting from the other side of the USA, and they're in college right now so it's not a trip they can make often, so I'm really glad we got to hang out so much, and we had a great time. I didn't have the time for the CPE scripts I was planning to work on, but the good news is most of the script writing for this update has been completed for a while, so there's not too much left to do once I have the time for them.

So, healthcare update time. I haven't heard back from that therapist yet, so I'll be contacting them again soon to hopefully get that going. Until then, my behavioral doc is seeing me monthly to basically fill the place of a therapist temporarily, so I'm not navigating this completely alone. It's going well and she's helping me take some steps towards getting out of my comfort zone, but I won't talk about that side of things more than that; it's a little too personal, and also pretty boring. For the medication side of things, though, I was thankfully able to get the EKG as hoped - it was much cheaper than I feared it might be, and the results came back good. I do have a high heartrate as we already knew, but the EKG didn't show anything unusual or concerning beyond that. With that result, my medication doc cleared me for stimulant usage, and I started taking them just this morning. So far I don't feel too different, but I do feel a bit more alert than usual - I talked to Orexius about it as well, since he started taking stimulants several months ago, and he also didn't feel very different when he got on them, aside from the benefits when he's actually working. I think I already feel a bit of a difference there, too; normally I put off writing weekly updates for a while, but I was able to get into it much more easily today, so that bodes well.

Since I only just started with the stimulants today, I don't know if there's any noticeable side effects yet, or how effective they will be, but I should have more to report on that next week. Plus, even if this kind isn't the right one for me, now that I'm cleared for stimulants we have a lot of other medications we can try, so it's only a matter of time until we find one that feels right!

Aaaand that's pretty much all there is to report. Now it feels like we're really getting things moving, and I'm really excited to see how I'm feeling by the end of the year. I'm going to wait a few days before I try diving into work again, so I can get used to the new medication and see how it makes me feel outside of the context of work, but at some point during this next week I'm going to give a "normal workday" a try, and then we'll go from there. Thank you all so much, again, for your incredible patience during this - it's safe to say that all of you are directly responsible for me being able to take this time to work on my mental health, not only because of the financial side of things, but also just because you've been so accepting and supportive of me taking this break from development. I can't imagine what it would've been like if I was dealing with this and a standard 9:5 dayjob, and I am eternally grateful to each and every one of you for the opportunity you've given me. You guys are the real MVPs here. We'll see you again in next week's update, and it's one I'm very hopeful for!

 

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, you can try a free demo of the game on our itch.io by clicking here! If you enjoy the game, please consider supporting us on Patreon! We couldn't make this game without our supporters!)

Hey everybody! It finally happened this week. I was able to wake up in the morning feeling ready to go, make my way down to my desk, and actually successfully work for the first time in months! As you can probably tell, I'm feeling pretty pumped. I wanted to give myself some time to adjust to the medication, so I didn't work for the first half of the week; it was on Thursday that it happened, and so far, every day since then I've also been able to work. I think I might have pushed myself a bit too far yesterday, I was pretty tired by the end of my workday and I felt like I was going to delay the weekly update to Sunday since I wasn't feeling up to recording footage at the time - but when I woke up today I felt much better, so here we are! I'm going to try and limit how much time I spend working for a while, so I don't push myself too far and end up going backwards, but it really does feel incredible to be creative again.

With that, I don't have too much else to talk about on the personal side this week, so let's get to the update!

First off, the video up above. How often has it happened while you're playing Crisis Point that you try to jump up to a ledge, but just barely don't make it, so you have to wait for Alicia to fall down far enough for you to ledge grab, then you can finally jump up? Well, it happened to me one too many times for my taste, so we're fixing it!

Once Alicia gets the Kilogrip upgrade, in addition to being able to normally ledge grab, she'll also get the ability to quickly parkour-vault up onto ledges she just barely didn't make it to. Since you need the Kilogrip first, you won't be able to do this right out of the gate - and it doesn't enable you to reach any ledges you couldn't already reach by ledge grabbing - but it improves the flow of platforming considerably! The animation doesn't lock you into it either; there's a short period at the start where you can't shoot, but that's the only restriction. You can cancel out of the animation at any time by pushing away from the ledge, and once you're up on the ledge you can start shooting again. There's still some work to do on the ability - as you can see the art isn't complete, for one, and there's also quite a number of bugs still - but the main functionality is done, and the issues will get ironed out before long.


The other thing I worked on this week is another ability I've been considering for the Iron Boots. Previously, the Iron Boots only let you sink in water and that was it - now, they have a second ability: an air slam attack!

This one is still VERY WIP right now, there will be special effects and whatnot. Functionally, the air slam serves as a way to descend quickly (which also helps you control your movement underwater better), and it also allows you to bounce off enemies while dealing melee damage if you slam into them! The latter functionality hasn't been implemented yet, which is why it doesn't show up in the video. I'm hoping to use this to make early underwater exploration more enjoyable, as well as implement some fun enemy-based platforming challenges.


And that's all for this week! It feels almost strange to be able to write a normal weekly update for once, but strange in a good way. Feels like things are finally getting somewhat back to normal. I still have a long way to go to be "healthy" - I don't think I've been mentally or physically healthy since well before starting Crisis Point, honestly - but this is a really big step forward, and I owe it all to you guys. Combining my already-bad mental health with the stress and burnout of working on the same project for such a long time brought me to a really bad place, and the only reason I'm here now, able to start recovering and trying to reach a happier place in life, is entirely because of you all. Thank you guys so, so much. I owe you more than I'll ever be able to repay, but I'll do my best to repay it by making Crisis Point the best game it can be! We'll see you next week with another update!

 

[WolframL]

Glad to hear you're feelng so much better, keep taking care of yourself!

Just started backing your project recently after finishing the public demo and wanting more. I've hit the end of the current version but haven't gotten around to backtraciking all the nooks and crannies with full abilities to see what I missed. One thing that did happen to me (and you've probably heard it already, apologies if so) was that the third boss Kara got caught in a lower corner while doing the wall-grabbing move and was stuck in place there for the rest of the fight. It felt unsporting, winning like that.

Anyhow, I've been loving the experience and looking forward to the future.

 

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, you can try a free demo of the game on our itch.io by clicking here! If you enjoy the game, please consider supporting us on Patreon! We couldn't make this game without our supporters!)

Hey everyone, I don't have too much to talk about this week. Like I talked about in last week's update, I'm trying to limit the amount of time I spend doing work for now - the last thing we want when I'm finally making progress is to push it too far and end up going backwards.

This week, I pretty much just continued working on the same things from last week, the ledge vaulting and slam attack. They might have looked fairly complete in last week's update (aside from the WIP animations), but there were lots of bugs and missing functionality, which is what I worked on this week. The slam in particular had some annoying issues when trying to bounce off of slimes that were on the ground, so it took a good bit of tinkering to get it all working properly. It's nearly finished now, I just need to make it actually deal damage to enemies, and do some more testing to make sure everything is working as intended.

Aside from work this week, I had another doctor's appointment, this time a followup with my general doctor. We mostly talked about my high heart rate (and I scheduled another visit for some other health issues I want to talk about), but there's not too much to talk about there. I've been measuring my heart rate at home, so I can confirm that it does reach the ~110-120 range that they measured, even when I'm at home, but my heart rate was actually a little lower this time than the last few visits which is good. Still too high, but it wasn't at the 120 they've been measuring the last few times. My appointment anxiety is getting better, too; it's still there, but I'm starting to be able to deal with it better and not get quite as worked up. Anyway, she's going to give me a referral to cardiology so I can get more thorough testing, probably using a holter monitor, and then we can figure out where to go from there.

I'm going to continue taking it slow with work - I'm paying a lot of attention to my brain when I'm working, and any time it starts feeling stressed or overwhelmed I stop - but it feels really good to actually be able to work semi-regularly again. My mental break happened pretty much immediately after the last CPE update came out, so unfortunately the next one is still a ways off - I'm basically starting at the very beginning of the update development process, and I'm not going to be working as much as I was before. I just want to be upfront about that so you guys know it'll be a while, even though I'm able to work again now. I'm also thinking about streams, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be doing them again any time soon - I think I want to wait until I can consistently work for several hours straight without stress, so I'm not just streaming for an hour or two then stopping. I'll keep you updated on that in the weeks to come, maybe something will change.


And that's about all I have to talk about today. Thank you so much for reading, and for being such incredible supporters! I don't know where I'd be without you guys; most people don't get the luxury of being able to essentially take a 4 month break from work for mental health reasons, and the fact that I was able to do that is just.. still mindblowing. You guys are absolutely amazing to me, and I will never forget that. Anyway, see you again in next week's update!

 

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our (mostly) weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, you can try a free demo of the game on our itch.io by clicking here! If you enjoy the game, please consider supporting us on Patreon! We couldn't make this game without our supporters!)

Hey guys, sorry I didn't post a weekly update on time! Now that I'm back to work, and trying to not do too much, I'm still trying to figure out exactly how to work around my mental health. I worked for probably 7 hours on Friday, because I felt fine the entire time - but after I was done, it hit me real hard how much of a mental toll that took, and I had to step away for a few days. Sorry about that; I'm all good now, but I'm still learning that I need to be careful with how much I work, even when I feel fine in the moment, so that sort of thing doesn't happen again. I'm going to be changing up my work schedule a bit, but update days will remain Saturday for the time being, so that won't impact much on your end.

Just to give you guys a quick update from what went on last week, there wasn't too much - I'm starting to get used to the ADHD meds, and it definitely feels like they're helping with my focus. The 7 hour work day last week was spent doing a big refactoring to our animation system that I've been wanting to do for ages, but stuff like refactoring and rewriting code has always been one of my biggest struggles in development. With the medication though, I had no problem staying pretty focused the entire time, so it definitely seems to do the trick! Aside from the refactoring, I also pretty much finished up the Ledge Vault and Slam abilities. There's still a tiny bit of work to be done on them, mostly bug testing, but they're 95% complete now so I should get some time to work on other stuff this week, like implementing the H-scene xray animations. I'm also planning on doing another refactoring for the H-scene system; as you all know, with last update's refactor, there were some unfortunate crashing issues introduced, and upon reexamining the whole system I realized there's a much better way to handle it that should be easier to work with and avoid crashes. I wouldn't be surprised if I made some stupid mistakes on the last refactor too, since I was heading in a bad mental direction while working on it, and didn't have the benefit of medications.

As one small aside, Orexius is basically done with the xray animations now (the only thing left is the Azulisk BE scene); he's working on more special effects now, and I plan to have him work on some less-important animations after, like Alicia idle fidgets, and stuff for the rest of the gang to do back at base camp instead of just standing around. He's still waiting on me to implement the Golem WIP animations in-engine, so he won't work on finishing the Golem animations up until after I get to that.


Like I've said before, v0.45 is still a ways off, between me just now getting back to work and needing to take things slow for now. Thank you guys so much for being so patient with this. I was admittedly worried about how it would feel when I finally got back to work, before; I have a tendency to feel real guilty about things when I feel like I've let someone down, and since it's been so long, I had the fear that I'd feel pressured to crunch hard to get the update out in a reasonable time since you've all been waiting so long. After all of your support and kindness, though, I've been able to stay rational and not wreck myself from self-inflicted pressure like I normally would, so getting back to work has been much easier and more enjoyable than I expected. All that to say, thank you again, and I can't wait to deliver you guys more real content! See you again on Saturday!

 

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our (mostly) weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, you can try a free demo of the game on our itch.io by clicking here! If you enjoy the game, please consider supporting us on Patreon! We couldn't make this game without our supporters!)

Hey guys, not much of an update this week (and sorry it was a day late again!) - I had multiple doctor visits this week, so a lot of my time was taken up by appointments (and appointment anxiety), and I didn't get to work too much. The work I did do was mostly on shaders and special effects stuff, mostly for the Slam attack, but I also want to do another pass over most of CPE's special effects now that Orexius has been learning how to animate effects. He's been putting out some excellent effects that I'm looking forward to showing off in future updates!

We're also going back and reviewing each area in the game, and seeing where we can improve them visually; the Deep Soil is our first target, because to be honest, the current iteration of the area is basically not at all like I envisioned it, and we want to fix that. I made a lot of mistakes early in development with not writing things down, and not giving my artists enough information to go on, so that's something I'm working on improving. Me and Puffernutter went over the Deep Soil this week and wrote down key points, what improvements we want to make, and gathered references so when she has time to work on tilesets she'll have a much clearer picture of what to aim for, and we plan on doing that for every other area in the game as well. Since I don't have to be very involved in the process, it won't slow down my work much, so don't start worrying this is going to be The Great Rework™ 2.0 or anything like that

Anyway, aside from the little work I did this week, Orexius started working on some less-necessary animations for the main cast, stuff like Rodriguez using the computer at base camp and Alicia idle fidgets (including a lewd one I think you'll all like). I'll probably show those off in a future update, once we have a handful of them done.

Sorry I don't have much more to share, but all the appointments I had really took it out of me. There's not much to talk about regarding the appointments, either; we made a minor change to my ADHD medication (trying out 2 short-term pills per day instead of 1 extended release and 1 short-term, because I wasn't really feeling much of an effect from the extended one), and the rest is going to wait until mid-November to really get anywhere, since I'm waiting to get on insurance once open enrollment starts before doing anything major. I did get blood drawn for an allergy test though, which I've never done before, so it'll be interesting to see if I've been secretly allergic to anything all these years and just never realized it!

So that's more or less what happened this week. Sorry again it's such a short post, but I'm all done with appointments for a while now, so I should get some solid work in by next update! Thank you all for reading, and for continuing to be so patient with me as I try and get things back to normal. See you again next update!

 

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, you can try a free demo of the game on our itch.io by clicking here! If you enjoy the game, please consider supporting us on Patreon! We couldn't make this game without our supporters!)


Hey everyone! Someday I will succeed in posting the weekly update on Saturday, like it's supposed to be, but today is not that day :' )

I struggled to get stuff done more this week compared to the last few, so there's not too much to talk about. I think the change in ADHD medication last week might not be working as well as I hoped; I plan on giving it one more week to see if I just need more time to adjust, but if it still feels worse by next weekend I plan on scheduling another appointment to alter things again. I think I mentioned the details last week, but I switched from 1 extended release pill in the morning and 1 short release pill in the afternoon, to just taking two of the short release pills, one in the morning one in the afternoon. Now that I've been on that for about a week, I get the feeling that it wasn't that the short-term medication is more effective, and more that the long-term pill from the morning was still active when I took the afternoon short-term pill, and the combination of the two of them was what made it feel more effective. If that's the case, it's very possible that just upping the dosage would be a good solution, but I have no intention of trying that without approval from my doctor first, so we'll see what happens.

In any case, between that and the fact that we also had both Puffernutter and Orexius's birthdays this week (send 'em some love!), it led to me getting less done than I'd hoped - but not nothing. I spent most of this week implementing some of the animations Orexius has been working on, as well as tinkering more with special effects and shaders. I redid the little dust clouds that Alicia leaves when she jumps, lands, or dashes across the ground - I don't have footage prepared to show it off, and it's a bit of a subtle change, but I like the new effect a lot more. We also gave Alicia a different ledge grab animation for when the ledge she grabs is too short to give her a foothold, so she'll grab on with both hands now instead. I also optimized various parts of the game's code; I'm still refamiliarizing myself with my codebase, since I hadn't worked on it in 4 months, and now has seemed like a great time to optimize and tweak things to be easier to work with. It's not exciting work, but it makes all my future work easier, so it's well worth it.

Like I mentioned last week, we're revisiting the visuals of older areas and analyzing them thoroughly to see where we can improve them, but we also spent some time this week working on the art design for a future piece of content as well. Too much of CPE's art design has been handled nonchalantly, since it all started back when the team consisted of just me (and I'm no art designer), so we're trying to be more thorough with stuff we create now. I know, in hindsight it seems like an obvious thing to do, but hey, mistakes now means we make better stuff in the future, and you can't learn from mistakes without making them in the first place

So that's the major stuff I worked on last week, but I do believe I promised a .gif dump in the title, didn't I? Here's a handful (but not all) of the animations Orexius has been working on, both character animations and effects:

Even though I've been struggling with work, Orex has been a busy bee, with a good mix of new and reworked animations to fill the game out. As you can see he's taken to special effects animation very well, and we're finally giving NPCs some actions to do at camp so they're not just standing around idly whenever you come back.

Well, that's about all I have for this week. Thanks for reading everybody, and for continuing to be patient with me - it would be great if getting back to work meant I was at 100% right away, but that definitely hasn't been the case, and I really appreciate you all letting me take my return at a healthy pace. We'll see you again in next week's update!

 

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, you can try a free demo of the game on our itch.io by clicking here! If you enjoy the game, please consider supporting us on Patreon! We couldn't make this game without our supporters!)

Hey everybody. This week for the most part continued the trend of last week, in that work was.. difficult for me. I'll get into the details here, but in general I wasn't able to get much done for most of the week, with the exception of Friday.


After struggling so much during the rest of the week, I realized on Friday that I still had some of the previous ADHD medication that my doctor prescribed me. I detailed the medications in last week's update so I won't go into it again, but I decided to try the old prescription again to see if it helped. Lo and behold, my productivity came right back and I was able to sit down for several hours and get stuff done! So, I think it's pretty safe to say that the newer prescription isn't working well, and I'll be trying to schedule another visit with them to talk about changing it again.

I don't think I'll be going back to the exact same prescription as before, since I do still think it could be more effective/last longer than it does; I'm pretty sure it comes down to dosage quantity, because the two pills are the same type of medicine, just one is an extended release and one is a quick release, so it seems likely the combination of the two is what was making me feel the effects. I'm not sure if we'll try higher doses of the short-term pill, a higher dosage extended release, or what, but I'll work with my doctor to figure out what the next step will be.

Back to the game itself; thanks to Friday's burst of productivity, I managed to refactor the game's H-scene code again. As you all probably know, in v0.44 I reworked CPE's H-scene code to make it easier to work with, but unfortunately my implementation wasn't very well thought out, and it also led to a handful of crashing issues. I had already come up with a better way to refactor that code again, and I finished doing that on Friday. There's still a bit of testing left to do, but the system is much better now, and it shouldn't be nearly as crash prone! Normally things like code refactoring are really tedious and I struggle to keep my focus to get them done in a reasonable time, but ADHD medication really makes a world of difference.

Aside from that it was business as usual; I started implementing some of Orexius's H-scene xray animations, and Orex continued working on character and special effects animations. Since we're already messing with a bunch of old H-scene stuff, he's working on updating the regular Slime H-scene, since it's pretty outdated by now; I plan to have him go over almost all of the other older H-scenes as well, to give my old animations a new coat of paint and bring them up to the game's newer quality standards. They'll keep the same poses of course, just with improved artwork more in line with the game's recent H-scenes, but it's a low priority so don't expect to see a lot of them in the near future.


Well, that's about all I have for you this week. I don't really have anything visual to show off, sorry about that, but I'm glad I was able to get SOMETHING done last minute this week! The more I try different medications and prescriptions, the closer I get to finding the right mix of things to help me with my ADHD. Even though the last few months have been the worst of it, I've struggled since the beginning of development with all of the quirks of ADHD and what it does to my brain, and considering what happened this week, I think figuring out the medication will be the point where things really get back on track. It's absolutely wild how much of a difference it makes. Anyway, thanks so much for reading everyone, and for continuing to stick around and support us! It might still be a few weeks before things really pick up, but I'll continue updating you as much as possible, both on the game's progress and on my own progress. We'll see you again in next week's update!

 

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, you can try a free demo of the game on our itch.io by clicking here! If you enjoy the game, please consider supporting us on Patreon! We couldn't make this game without our supporters!)

Hey everyone! This week in CPE development, I decided to take a pause from the other things I was working on, and tinker with a few things that I've been curious about for a while. The first I have a visual for, and the second is still something I'm figuring out, but seems promising.

First off, the video above! I've mentioned before that I'm trying to learn shaders, which is a laborious process - shaders are written in a different programming language than the game itself, so there's already a layer of difficulty in learning them. That's not a big deal since most programming fundamentals carry over regardless of the language used, but then the more difficult part is just that shaders are so much more complex and obtuse than anything I've coded for the main game. A lot of game creation engines will have visual shader creators, like Unity's Shader Graph, but my engine has none of that, so every shader has to be written by hand.

All that is a long way to say that even though it's a difficult process, I'm making progress! The video above is a showcase of that, because this week I managed to design and implement a fiery dissolve effect shader, which is now being used on the vines you burn away using the Flare Strike. The video shows the old effect on the left, and the new effect on the right, so you can really get a picture for how much better it looks. I'm thrilled with it; this is the kind of effect I've always wanted to be able to create, and I can apply a lot of the things I learned in making the effect to other parts of CPE as well! In general I'm spending a lot of my time right now trying to learn new techniques, and find ways to improve my development pipelines, especially the tedious parts, to try and prevent the burnout I was feeling for such a long time - which brings me neatly to the next thing.

One of the most time-consuming parts of making Crisis Point is level creation. At the moment, every room in CPE requires every single asset to be placed by hand. CPE is made up of 32x32 pixel tiles, and the screen size is 640x480, which is the smallest size a room in the game can be - that's a size of 20x15 tiles, or 300 total tile spaces, in the smallest possible room. Not every tile will be filled of course, many of them need to be blank space for gameplay, but often there are multiple layers of detail required in a room, and most rooms are bigger than 640x480! On top of that, my engine's default level creation tool.. kinda sucks. It works fine for smaller and simpler things, but large rooms cause it to lag, and it lacks some features that would be tremendously helpful. The end result is that creating and fully detailing a room often takes several hours, and there are hundreds of rooms in the game already, and hundreds more to come. It's honestly a really boring process and I should've done something about it a long time ago, but I never got around to looking at other options.

This week though, I decided to look into the idea of creating a level design tool of my own, or at least finding some way to make the process easier. With CPE already being so far in development, and my plans to switch engines for my next game, creating a fully-featured level designer doesn't seem like a prudent option at this stage - however, I don't necessarily need a fully-featured design tool. I decided to take a look at how my engine stores the data for levels, and as it turns out, they're basically just json files with a custom file extension - they're written in plain text that can absolutely be read, edited by hand, and auto-generated using the tools available to me. I still have some testing to do to know for sure if this route is going to work out, but my early testing seems extremely promising that I'll be able to, at the very least, create an auto-tiling tool that places tiles for me, and exports them into a format that my engine can load natively. This would quite literally save over an hour per room designed, and since I'd be able to load them into the project files like any room created using the IDE itself, it wouldn't cause any changes to the game on the user end! Generating tiles at runtime could cause extra loading time, for example, but this method wouldn't have any effect on the game once exported.

Needless to say, if this works out it will take a bit of time to develop the tool, but the time (and tedium) saved by doing it would be immeasurable. I'm super excited about the idea, and I'll be looking into it more thoroughly next week, so I should have a good idea of how feasible it is by the next update!


So that's most of what I spent my time on this week. I did a few other things, like implementing a pink vignette on the screen when Alicia's libido gets high, but those were the big things. Like before, I'm trying to not push myself too much with work for the time being, so I'm only putting in a few hours a day, but I'm generally feeling more and more capable of getting stuff done as time goes on! Unfortunately my medicine doctor's schedule is backed up, so I won't be able to see them about changing my prescription again until mid-November, but I have enough of my old prescription left to last me most of that time, so everything should be fine.

On Orexius's end, he worked on a bunch of smaller things this week; finishing up some of the new ledge grab/vault animations, some BE alts for the new animations being added, a crouched version of Alicia's "taking damage" animation, updating the Tentacle H-scene, and so on. Not super exciting stuff, but all important!

And that's pretty much it for this week. Thank you guys for reading, and I hope you like the new effect as much as I do - I look forward to implementing some more stuff using my new shader knowledge in the near future. We'll see you again next week!

 

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, you can try a free demo of the game on our itch.io by clicking here! If you enjoy the game, please consider supporting us on Patreon! We couldn't make this game without our supporters!)

Hey everyone, sorry for the late update - Saturday ended up being super busy with chores and errands, so I wasn't able to get to writing the update post until today.

There's not too much to talk about this week, but not because we didn't make progress! I spent the entire week working on one specific thing - a custom level editor, like I talked about last update. I did some testing early in the week, and determined that as far as I can tell, the method I came up with to export levels from my own editor works perfectly! I was able to make a simple level and pull it into the main CPE project file, then load it, enter it, and leave it with no issues. The room was mostly just made up of collision blocks (no tiles or anything yet), but I was also able to implement a room transition, just to make sure more complex things work as well.

There is a bit of manual file editing I have to do to make it work, so before you start wondering, no, this will not be a publicly released editor. It would unfortunately be impossible for anyone without access to the project files to be able to import levels using this method, but because the levels are imported directly into my project files, it also means there won't be any kind of impact on the game's performance or loading times.

Needless to say, I'm thrilled! I spent the entire week working on the editor itself, which you can see an example of in the video above. It's proving to be a pretty tricky process, especially being able to zoom and drag the room around, but I'm already excited to start using it. It may look pretty simple at the moment, but I'm doing quite a bit of optimization in the early stages to make sure the editor will perform well even when working on huge levels. Right now, I've optimized the way the editor is handled so that it doesn't really matter how many things I place in the level, it won't really have a performance impact. I wanted to get the basics working properly here before working on filling in assets, which is why the menus I open in the video are all empty.

The default level editor in my IDE is missing so many features I want from it, and it lags to hell when rooms get big or complicated, so seeing my editor running at ~9,000 FPS even when filled to the brim with objects is exciting. I'll be able to implement any features I want into this thing, so once it's finished, designing levels for Crisis Point will be so much easier and faster. It's also just been a lot of fun to work on, honestly! It's a nice change of pace to program something like this.


I'll likely be continuing to mostly work on the level editor over the next week, but I'll be doing some work on implementing more of Orex's animations as well. He has a lot of smaller animations that he's been working on and updating, like the Warped Soldier's combat animations, that just need to be implemented by me now.

This update may be a smaller one, but the work I'm doing now is a gateway towards the game being finished faster, AND it'll let me do some more exciting stuff with the levels in the game! Stuff like more interesting lighting, and more parallax objects, which would've been far too cumbersome to implement in the default level editor. I can't wait to see what I can cook up with it. In the meantime, thank you so much for reading, and for continuing to be so patient with us! I wish we were closer to releasing an update to the game, since you all have had to wait so long, but since I'm still getting in the swing of working, we haven't quite figured out the right medication for me, and I'm trying not to overwork myself, it's still a little slow going. I did manage to have an 8 hour work day this week though, working on the level editor, and I felt fine afterwards! Hopefully I'll be able to start doing longer work days more often, so things can really get back on track, and I'll be able to see my medicine doctor again mid-November to try changing up my medication again. Things are looking really good lately, but I still have to ask for your patience just a little longer before I'm back at full power.

And that's about it for this week! Thank you so much for reading, and for continuing to support us. We'll see you again in next week's update!

 

[WolframL]

Thought I'd drop in a comment here too, glad that the editor idea seems like it's gonna work out and save you a lot of time in the future, especially given how much more you're planning to add to the map. Sucks that you aren't able to talk to your doctor sooner about your medication but at least it sounds like everything else is working out for you and you've got a good idea where things are going. Hopefully it keeps getting better once you've had that chance to get in!

 

[Anon42]

Thought I'd drop in a comment here too, glad that the editor idea seems like it's gonna work out and save you a lot of time in the future, especially given how much more you're planning to add to the map. Sucks that you aren't able to talk to your doctor sooner about your medication but at least it sounds like everything else is working out for you and you've got a good idea where things are going. Hopefully it keeps getting better once you've had that chance to get in!

Hey, thanks - both for dropping a comment, and for the well wishes! Things have definitely improved a lot since just a few months ago, it's crazy how much of a difference it makes to be able to get the help you need.




(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, you can try a free demo of the game on our itch.io by clicking here! If you enjoy the game, please consider supporting us on Patreon! We couldn't make this game without our supporters!)

Hey everyone, just a text update today. This was a slightly weird week for me; I had a few days where I felt off and was struggling to get work done, and I think I had my first experience with a "concerta crash" - right around the time my medication started wearing off for the day I just lost all of my energy, and spent the rest of the evening feeling bummed for no discernible reason. I did some googling the day after, and it sounds like it's a fairly normal side effect of the ADHD medication. Since it's a stimulant, when it wears off it can end up making you feel pretty terrible. It's only happened the one time so far, so hopefully it won't be a regular occurence, but there are ways to counter it and I plan on talking to my doctor about it when I see her again mid-November.


With all that being said, even though the week was kinda off, it's far from all bad news! I didn't get as much done as I hoped, but I got some good work done on the level editor; programming menus is kind of a hassle, but I managed to get a foundation for the menus that I can use for most of them, allowing me to populate a list of unlimited size with objects for placement in the level editor, scroll through that menu, select what object to place, and put it in the level.

I also finished early work on the exporting process, so now when I'm done with a level I can easily save it and drop it straight into Crisis Point, and it will come out the exact same as it does in the editor. I also managed to finish implementing both room size and grid options, and fixing any of the minor bugs that have popped up. Basically, this week was more foundational stuff, and I should be able to pretty easily add in new assets to the level editor from here on. Tilesets will require a unique menu, since they're functionally different from objects, but the work I've done will be applicable to all objects in the game; collisions, enemies, triggers, and so on. It's still got a ways to go, especially to implement some of the features I want like auto-tiling, but the core feature set is looking great.

Aside from my work, Orex has finished updating all of the Warped Soldier's gameplay animations, and he's been doing some more experimentation with 3D models and rendering. He found some pixel rendering techniques online, and was able to get some surprisingly good looking assets out of it! With the golem animations from before, he simply traced over renders with pixels, which takes quite a bit of time - but the new rendering techniques he found allow him to export 3d animations directly to the ingame pixelated resolution, with basic shading and everything. They're a bit rough around the edges, naturally, but they work extremely well as a base to build animations off of, and save him a lot of time - especially with animations that have complex 3D motions. I'll try to post some examples of animations using that technique next week, but I can assure you that you can't even tell it was made using 3D models for help, once the full detail is applied.


Hopefully this next week will be less strange for me (fingers crossed, since it's also my birthday week), so I can get more stuff done. I'm really enjoying working on this editor, at least when my brain's behaving. I'm trying to make some changes in my house and work schedule to accommodate my ADHD, as well; one of the negatives of having so many people living in one house is that things can get pretty loud/active here sometimes, and since my "office" is in the main room of the house, it can unfortunately be really distracting, especially with my ADHD. I spent some money this week on setting up a nice upstairs office in our bedroom, so I have a quiet place to work when I need it. We still need a few things before it's usable, but they're in the mail and should arrive this week. Fingers crossed it'll help me out!

And that's about it for this week. Coming to terms with my mental health is a difficult process, but I'm realizing I need to start making changes in life aside from just taking medication to accomodate my mind and work with it, instead of against it. In addition to the office upstairs, I started doing intermittent fasting again (which has previously worked great for me, both in terms of weight loss and generally feeling way better), and our household has started going on almost-daily walks, to try and work on our physical health and hopefully get my heart rate under control. I've said it a million times already, but seriously, thank you all so much for giving me the time and opportunity to work on all of this! I'm so grateful to all of you for sticking with us.

As one last thing before I go: I can't promise anything yet (especially with the weirdness of the past week), but I'm seriously considering trying to stream again soon - maybe not on a schedule, but just a stream or two here and there - so keep an eye out for that if you're interested. We'll see you again next week with another update!

 

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, you can try a free demo of the game on our itch.io by clicking here! If you enjoy the game, please consider supporting us on Patreon! We couldn't make this game without our supporters!)

Hey everyone. Sorry for not posting an update last week, I've been struggling to be honest. With all of my health issues coming to light thanks to my medical appointments, I've been trying to make a lot of life changes to improve things, and it's been kind of overwhelming to have so many things change so suddenly. I've never been good with change, I'm very much a creature of habit, and these last few weeks have been rough. It's all stuff that will be great for me in the long run - going on daily walks, eating out less, cutting sugar from my diet, changing our office setup to accommodate my ADHD brain, and more - it's just difficult to get used to all the changes at once. Work is still progressing, especially from Orexius who has been getting a lot done lately, but my half is going slower than I'd like.

For the time being, I'm putting a pause on the level editor, and focusing on trying to get the most important stuff done so I can put out a new update for you guys asap. We've kept you all waiting so long already, I don't want to push it back any longer if I don't have to. To that end, I've been working on some bugfixing, and implementing the Golem enemy's animations that I posted ages ago; he's proving to be more complex to implement than most enemies, thanks to his floating movement patterns, attack variety, and hands/body being disconnected in many animations, but I think that'll make him pretty interesting as an encounter once all is said and done.

Orexius has been doing a lot of work in a lot of different places: he's currently in the process of updating all of the special effects for Alicia's blaster, and the various upgrade chips you can collect for it. I'll post a few of them here - keep in mind these are just direct exports of the animations, not actually ingame, so they'll look a little different.

As you can see, the bullets themselves are getting more animation, but they're also getting unique muzzle flashes, and unique impact and dissipate animations, depending on whether the bullet hits something or reaches its maximum range without hitting anything.

He's getting real good at special effects animation lately, as you all saw with the underwater mine explosion, so having him go back and update a lot of our old effects is exciting. He's been getting so many animations done lately that I'm just playing catch-up at this point, trying to implement them all

Aside from effects animation, he also started working on the Poison Alraune BE H-scene; it's not animated yet, but he's finished the base sprite and pose. Here's a preview of that, and with the amount of "more futa" requests I get, I imagine it'll be at least a few people's new favorite!

And that's about all I have for game updates. As far as personal updates go, I had a follow-up doctor's appointment a few days ago, and we decided to try raising the dosage on the ADHD medication I'm taking. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it before, but the medication I'm on right now does seem to work, buuuut only sometimes. Some days I can feel it working and it really helps with productivity, and other days I feel nothing, so with any luck a higher dosage will do the trick. I have another follow-up with her in a month, and I also talked over my options with her during our appointment; if just raising the dosage doesn't help, I have a few other things I can try, like taking the pills in a different order, or taking more than one of the short-term pill at a time. The medicine I'm on is a controlled substance, so I went over all of those things thoroughly with her, to get her approval on what I should and shouldn't do with them. I want to make sure I don't have to wait another full month to try something new if this doesn't work right away, but I'm not about to start messing around with pills without doctor approval, so this seems like a happy medium.


To wrap up, I have high hopes for this coming week; there's loads of stuff for me to implement from Orexius and hopefully the higher dosage of ADHD medication will help me do it. Our upstairs office setup is nearly done, all that's really missing now is a dedicated computer; my laptop will be fine for some types of work, but it struggles to handle the size of CPE's main project file. Still, I should be able to start doing a good amount of work there, and it's a much quieter and more isolated space that should help avoid the ADHD distraction pitfalls of living with a lot of people.

Anyway, that's it for this week. I was hoping I would've been back at full capacity by now, but mental (and physical) health are no joke, especially after years of pushing through the difficulties instead of dealing with them in a healthy way. Thank you for reading, and doubly so for sticking with us even though the path back to full-time work has been a difficult one! It means so much that you've all continued to be so supportive and understanding even after all this. With any luck, we'll see you next week with a better update - and with any luck, I'll also be able to stop prefacing everything with "with any luck" soon!

 

[WolframL]

Just glad you're doing okay, fingers crossed that the new dosage does the trick but it sounds like you've got other options in case, and things are starting to get better at least. The teasers for new animations and the new Alraune scene are looking nice, can't wait to see them implemented whenever the next build is ready.

Would you mind a question? I've been trying to find a blaster chip (apparently it's the Seeker Shot from Patreon posts) and I haven't been able to locate it despite running around like an idiot with debug effects turned on for easy exploration (did find a hidden SP upgrade or two I'd missed though). I saw from one of the posts that it's supposed to be hidden and hard to find, would you mind giving a hint to where I should be looking for it?