Turns out it's been four months since I've posted one of these, whoops.
I'll start with the less exciting news: that being how progress has stagnated, for better or worse. I've had a lot of stuff going on IRL - working two jobs, personal things, etc - that affected the time and energy I had to give to ZC. Coupled with the fact that I'm up to some of the more intricate parts of development - boss scripting for one - it's probably no surprise the development's been slower since March. There was meant to be a 2.5 demo released as part of the Expo; this didn't happen because of what I've previously mentioned.
On the other hand though, there's still exciting news I can and want to share!
First off, Ether's come on board as a co-developer in regards to all things story, world-building and character design, along with her spritesmanship. The concept of the Crests - what they are, where they've come from - are all things we've been working to address, as well as establishing a stronger plot. Three Crests wasn't particularly story-intensive prior to Ether and I starting the story teardown, so modifying various elements to better suit the new story has been straightforward enough. There's still plenty of work to be done, but the important thing is that the story is a lot more focused than it was before!
Oh, and the Crests have been redesigned as well - by Ether's hands, of course.
Other incremental updates include:
- All of the LCD colour palettes (remember the last update?) that Three Crests uses are in ZC now. I just really love these colour schemes, and they feel so much easier on the eye.
- Retrofitting a bunch of scripts Moosh released to the public domain recently
- Debugging, balancing for the Expo demo that never eventuated. Also a few minor tweaks to areas to accommodate new scripts I've implemented into the quest
- Deedee was kind enough to give me access to a stack of scripts she developed years ago for Hyrule Fantasy - some of these are finding their way into Three Crests as bosses
- New intro sequence!
- A lot of interior designing - most of the caves in the game are finished now!
- NPC scripting and the like. The trading quest is about halfway done.
At this point I'd be leaving it here, but I think after such an extended break in public updates I want to hear from you guys! If you have any comments or questions, feel free to fire away down below.