[Strygon]

Due to the headache inducing trickyness of maintaining mods on Knossos, I've pulled all my mods down from it for the time being. If someone wants to download and play, just ask me and I'll give a link for the download of the files.

[Strygon]

The release plan has changed again. Rather than going for either one giant release or a 2-Part release, I've decided that, with how the mission plans have lined up, I could actually go ahead and release the campaign in four "Blocks", each of around 10 missions. Block 1 (more glamorous/appealing name for the blocks pending) is in this case asset complete, only requiring mission and art to be finished.

The art is currently the least worked on part of the campaign, since most (well, all) existing drawings had to be tossed out due to quality shortage. As far as missions go, I've got 6/10 missions as good as finished.

Now have some fancy screenies I took throughout testing.

[Nightmare]

Now have some fancy screenies I took throughout testing.

Those look pretty nice~ 

[Strygon]

Work will now proceed at full speed ahead. I'll try to get as much work done as physically possible before the end of July for an Act 1 release. Even if it means having to dedicate entire days and nights to meet that deadline.

[starlord]

That’s great news strygon but don’t go so far as to risk exhaustion.

[Strygon]

Gonna have to announce yet another setback as I have to go back and redo all the weapons and then tweak balance and so on. Art is also progressing absurdly slowly because I can't seem to get much to look good right now. Overall, it's just nowhere even remotely close to the quality I'd want this thing to have, so I'll probably need to take the rest of this year just to shore up all the low quality bits.

I am deeply sorry if I'd gotten anyone's hopes up, and I recommend to not expect too much from this mod. It's going to be released but it won't be anything revolutionary or even new.

[Strygon]

Though, before I go off and work on that (while also dealing with moving to another country) I'm also uploading a build to Knossos that contains the Demo, a remaster of OCaD and two simulator missions to get another taster of the gameplay.

[Strygon]

Giving proof that this mod is in fact, still alive. I'm about a couple gameplay missions away from being finished with the flight portions of Act 1. Main chunk of work left to do then is VN art and segments.

[Strygon]

Update for 2022 and onwards:

I will be drastically cutting back on public updates, and the planned open beta is cancelled. Development has slowed down dramatically, and I cannot guarantee any release of any kind until well beyond February 2022.

I will also no longer be posting art updates.

[Marguel]

Sad to hear that. Take care of yourself!
We'll be waiting when it's ready!

[Strygon]

Development is now proceeding at full speed. Release should be imminent.
All missions have been finished and tested, all that's left now is the VN scenes.

[Strygon]

Alright, back to work after release, seems most of the major bugs have been ironed out hopefully.

Unfortunately Episode 1 didn't quite release with all the stuff I wanted. The missions, ships and weapons are fine, but what I'm seriously unhappy with is the VN aspect.
To put it short, writing is a PITA and I didn't want to hold off release just to add more words to a text file when everything else is complete, so my first step Post-EP1 is to continue working full steam on the VN Sequences and actually add the words I wanted. That said, that might take a while due to the aforementioned issue of writing being annoying and painful.

Second major thing that needs change is the art. To put it even shorter: It sucks.

Okay it maybe doesn't suck, but I look at it now and think "Jesus H. Christ, I could've done a significantly better job on those sprites, huh?"

Basically, I don't like the weird facing, lack of emotion and inconsistent shading/line thickness of the different sprites, so my second big step will be to redo all the existing VN art (the Head.ANIs are fine and will remain as-is).

Once this is done, I will be able to move on to Episode 2. That part should be easier to make compared to Episode 1 given I only need to add roughly 10-or-so ships and not 70, and I've already got a base to work off of.

[wookieejedi]

Thanks for the update, looking forward to continued updates and progress!

[Strygon]

Good morning (or extremely very late evening, it's currently 5 in the morning at the time of posting),

Today I bring you a gift

A gift of elf



And also the first step in VN art refreshing. Basically all the sprites will be forward facing now rather than side-facing. The quality of the art (****ty pose aside, don't mind that) I think is also significantly better than before.
For self-reference, the main lineart will now use 14px lines with 10 or 12px lines for internal details. Previous sprites were a little all over the place with line thickness.

Expect me to post more of these in the future. If there's any interest I might also go into more detail about how I draw these things and prep them for VN usage.

[ShivanSlayer]

That looks much better

[Strygon]

Hello there!
I've not got that much to show to you this time around, but I do have some words on what you should be expecting for EP2.

First of all, more complex missions.

EP1 had very simplistic mission design, almost to a degree I found unacceptable, but it was sort of necessary to ease the player into the overall world, the new flight model and much faster pace in general.

EP2 hereby assumes the player is now used to the new flight model, so now there's no excuse to not go all out with complexity.

I'll tinker around with what's feasible, but if all goes as planned, expect some proper bossfights in several missions, along with the properly set up crafting system. And just much more meat per mission in general.

With the new animation system, I'm also playing around with the possibility of mecha missions.



It's very crude right now, but I'm experimenting with how far I can go with this new thing.

Anyway, now for an art update. Every time I finish a character I roll a die to see who's up next. After the elf it was Captain Shiranui.



Truth be told, her sprite initially was the one I hated the most in terms of quality. I'm so much happier with how it looks now.
Though disclaimer, don't worry I won't do an art update every single episode. This is pretty much the quality I'm fine with settling on.

[Strygon]

It's time for another art update.

First up was Izumi Phobos. Actually one of my favorite designs, but the last sprite was just awful.



Now I'd argue she looks pretty cute. I also took the opportunity to unbutton her jacket here in order to make her look more casual, as she'd be exactly the type to wear it like that.

Next one on the list then was Melanie Eternity, the Lead Engineer on the Cyclone's hangar deck. Her sprite looked visually alright but suffered from massive problems relating to line thickness, to the point where the downscaling caused most of the linework to either be barely visible or completely invisible. Also the shading sucked.

[Strygon]

Amongst one of my (dumber) ideas I had for EP2 would be one really really big ground battle. Well, everything's finally laid out now, all I need to do for it is to actually make the pieces do stuff.

Making the terrain not look awful was a nightmare and a half, but the rest was actually quite fun.

[Strygon]

Development has hit a complete standstill as I am trying to sort out a series of increasingly concerning real life problems and financial issues. Would love to continue working on this but it would be rather difficult to do so if I'm out on the streets.

If you have further queries, please send a PM to this account.

[Strygon]

Forgot to post an update on this, but the situation has largely resolved itself and development is continuing as normal, though Episode 1 has been taken offline for maintenance and rework for the time being.

Additionally, I would like to ask something of everyone who is seeking to play this mod:

Please do not use Text to Speech to replace the generic message noises. I've seen it in several instances now where it seriously messes with mission and event timing, as TTS is significantly slower than actual human speech. It WILL cause trouble later down the line in certain missions and I cannot offer any support for if things end up breaking as a result of it.