So as of yesterday, I’ve finally finished and released the v1.20a update for chain of lucidity… which I then had to promptly supplant with a hotfix in the form of v1.20b — business as usual, really. At any rate, the past month or two were one hell of a ride, and at one point the update almost wouldn’t have happened in the first place: The project had gotten corrupted and I’d lost all my progress. If I hadn’t made a backup of the project as of v1.15a due to Game Maker Studio’s 2.3 update, it would’ve been all over. I started using Github after that, but of course I still had to recover a lot of progress… which I kinda did in the span of a few days.
At any rate, unless anything else comes up that requires fixing, this is the absolute final update for the game. It’s been over three years since its initial release, and it’s high time for me to move on to new projects, which happen to be within the scope of what I want to talk about in this update.
Starting with the elephant in the room: the second Mukai game. I’d actually attempted starting development on it back in 2019, believe it or not, but most I got done were a few new assets and maybe the shot types. Given that I effectively made a copy of the COL project to use as a base, and considering all the work I’ve done on COL itself since, it of course reasons from that that there’s not much I’ll be able to reuse — not that that’s much of a setback, thankfully.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I’m hoping to restart development sometime late this year (November/December, perhaps), but no later than early 2022. Various circumstances have held me off from even so much as finding the motivation to work on it, not least of all my art burnout. However, I realize that there are many other aspects of the game that I could have been working on aside from graphics and code: music, for one, or even just writing the dialogue. “Know your limits and then work around them” is good advice to live by, and I’m going to try doing so, going forward.
As an aside, I did receive a new drawing tablet last week (a Huion Kamvas Pro 12), so I’ll be trying to take this as an opportunity to continue shaking off the rust and improving my art skills.
What I’d also like to work on is a new album. You may remember from my very first General Update Log that I mentioned I’d had a plan for one, and of course that’s exactly what I’m intending to work on. I can’t say how long that album is going to be yet. I’m going to try shooting for 10 tracks again, but it could also end up with less. I haven’t entirely given up on my dream of having and selling physical copies of Proto-Unreality Replication ~Len’en Kai Mugenri~ and Dextrous Yet Destitute yet, either. I’d love to have them made, it’s just that it costs a lot of money, and if there’s no demand, I obviously won’t be able to come anywhere near breaking even. Maybe someday in the future, though…
Now that I’m finally done with COL, though, I may open song commissions again soon. First I just want to write something for myself to get back into the swing of things, but after that, definitely going to take another jab at it. I should note, however, that I’ll be changing my pricing system to be on a per-minute basis, rather than per-phrase. My prices will also be somewhat higher, since I felt like I charged way too little for the amount of work I put in. Just as a heads-up to those of you who’ve been waiting all these months for me to open commissions again.
One last thing I’d like to mention — just this once — is that I’ve got a second blog that serves as a personal gaming journal. You can check it out here. I won’t bring it up here again, since the TGA blog is meant to be for, well, TGA-related stuff (i.e. the games and music I’m working on), but I’ll be posting on Twitter whenever there’s a new journal entry, so you can’t miss it (unless Twitter’s algorithm says otherwise).
That’s all. Thank you all for your continued support, and I hope I’ll have something new for you to look forward to soon.
Gensakudan Blog ― 懐古世紀日誌 