Devlog #1

A development update to give you all an idea of what's currently going on behind the scenes:

First, you may have noticed that in the latest public update, I jumped to version 0.7.0, despite that 4 prey capacity was also supposed to make it in before hitting v0.7.0. The short answer for this is that I am burning out - on animation specifically. Between grinding through all of the 3 prey animations to having a short break to code the powerup framework to doing MORE animations for the powerups and even MORE for updating Mia's sprites to the new design, it's just become too much for me to immediately handle.

Right now, while 90+% of the player's code is optimized and modular, most of the rest of the game project is maybe 30% optimized. A large chunk of code is derelict, another chunk is redundant, ALL of the enemies need a complete rewrite to match how the player works now, melee systems could be greatly improved, new melee moves could be added, new platforming options like wall jumping and possibly ledge grabbing needs to happen, I'd still like to update numerous sound effects (and our composer has been raring to go for new music), stealth detection/sound/line of sight I have massive improvements to do, a lighting system is in the works, AND somewhere in version 0.7 I'd still like to get Mia's sprite rework in as well as the blind drake's if I can manage it.

This sounds like an absurdly large list (and I assure you it is), especially when I've just mentioned I'm burning out. To that end, let me clarify: I'm burnt out on making new player animations - I don't yet know that it's even possible for me to burn out on working on Project: G.L.U.T.T. in general. I regularly simply have too much fun working on this game, challenging though it is. That said, metaphorically speaking I need to rest my animating muscles so I can put my logic/coding muscles to work. The project will benefit greatly from it, and development continues to constantly get easier the better the code is.

As for Mia and the blind drake's sprite reworks, these won't be as bad for me to handle right now since I'm not creating brand new sprites to add to Mia's 2,500+ frames, rather just reworking them - and the same for the blind drake. Further, if I do Mia's 4 prey animations now, those will be all that many more frames to have to update when I update her design.

Additionally, for all the other work I have to do this update that DOESN'T involve animating, I already have the frameworks written for in code - there's a lot of work to be done, but I have a very clear plan to tackle it all!

Where this leaves us moving forward into v0.7.0: I do not yet have a production schedule laid out, largely because at the start of any update I have no clue how long everything is going to take. Generally some 20-40% of the way through work on the update is when I can lay out a more defined production schedule, and actually have a legitimate chance at making an accurate release date prediction. I'm also going to be starting with existing code clean up and optimization, which is rather hard to figure out how long it will take.

Patreon beta builds I still plan to be doing whenever I can of course, but I'd probably expect something like 1 build a month for the time being. I'll be doing more Patreon polls now and again as well once I've moved on from the optimization phase to decide on which features to put in the next available build, like the new Mia sprites, new platforming capabilities, new melee options, updated enemies, etc.

Lastly, I will have a new public update out with fixes for the most critical bugs that have been reported within the week, and also start posting recent changelogs here too!