Welp, turns out I forgot to celebrate this blog's ten year anniversary. How silly of me. And heeey, I also haven't posted since October 2018... ooops. I'm so sorry for everyone who actually follows this blog and never gets the updates I promise. Back when I started this whole thing in May 2010 I had way more free time and posted almost every day. Nowadays I have a full plate of things to attend to, including having to find a new job due to the Corona crisis, although I managed to do just that.

Anyways, let's get to business, shall we? The one thing you're probably all asking yourselves: what's the current state of Project Parfait? The honest answer is... I don't know. I'm not sure what to do with the game right now, and my motivation to work on it is at 0%. I do intend on finishing it one day, in whatever form that may be - maybe as a game, maybe not, only time will tell. But the build that has been shown off the last couple updates can be safely regarded as scrapped. 

Worry not, though, as I will make sure that its engine which I have been working on for years will not go to waste! I'm currently using it for a secret, much more limited in scope, project. Here's a little preview:

More updates to come... sometime. I cannot promise regular updates, but I really don't want to let this blog just go either. We'll see how things go from here, but rest assured I'm still alive!

PS: Yes, I have officially nuked my Twitter account. I barely ever used it anymore anyway, so don't mourn its departure!

[Explanation about gaps between blog posts goes here]

Believe it or not, I've actually been hard at work! Among other things, I have redone the entire opening sequence from scratch! For the... fifth time now? Been mostly busy adding and/or fixing little details, because I'm a helpless perfectionist when it comes to eventing, which may or may not be why it takes me years to get anything done, but it's cool to playtest your game and see how everything comes together.

I'm pretty content with the opening this time, though, and it's probably the last time I'm making any major changes to it. Other than that I've also fixed some things that should've been done a long time ago. Battles have actual backgrounds now instead of using a map screenshot, wow!

Also, I removed the the borders from the character portraits and made the backgrounds transparent instead. Next on the to-do list is to actually center them, but all in due time, right? Other than what I mentioned there have been a lot of minor changes to the database, including general rebalancing, since my many replays of the opening made me realise just how weirdly unbalanced everything was. Ooops!

Lastly, here's a ten minutes gameplay video of a sidequest. I recorded this before I did most of the aforementioned rebalancing, so if things seem too easy/difficult rest assured that I have already taken measures to fix things. Also, excuse the mapping. It was late at night.

And with all that said and gone, goodbye! See you next blog update in 2024! 😆

Warning: the following post is not a development update. But I had wanted to share how I got into gamedev stuff for a very long time (and when I say that I actually mean since I started this blog!), and today is that day. Read on if you're curious or close the tab if this kinda stuff just bores you, 'cause this one's gonna be wordy!

Welp, it's been a while again. So after half a year I have made up my mind in regards to Project Parfait. I will finish it in its current incarnation, no matter how long it will take. One of the many reasons why I put it on hiatus were some issues concerning the creator of the graphic's private antics. Looking back, that was fairly dumb, since there's always a huge difference between what a person creates and what a person does behind (semi-)closed doors. 

Anyhow, while these last couple months haven't been the most productive ones, I did make some progress on the game, mainly in mapping out some new areas! And since that's likely all you wanna see, have some screenies.

Not much more to say for now. See you in another seven months! 

Welp, it's time for a new year, so what better way to start it than to share some bad news! The tl;dr version will be at the bottom, but I'd like to take the time and explain a couple things and talk about the future of my projects. Here's a timeline of things that happened:

1. August: Mary finds out the graphics packs she's been used are made by a certain personality that should not be talked about in greater detail, putting a big dent into her motivation to continue Parfait in its current form, but development continues nonetheless.
2. September: A terrible HDD crash kills everything on Mary's computer and she can't afford a new one so she keeps working with the old one which is on the verge of dying for real.
3. October: Zeigfried McBacon and Mary start and finish a little action game called "Lakeholt's Dragon" for the IGMC 2017.
4. November: Mary's HDD dies for good and is replaced by a new one. To her horror, she discovers that she didn't save the newest version of Porject Parfait in the Steam folder but on her desktop, meaning auto backups weren't made, knocking development progress back to what it was in August/September.
5. December: Ziggy and Mary's contest entry is disqualified due to the judge's plain laziness and unwillingness to actually put some FUCKING EFFORT into their job. This, coupled with the loss of progress on Parfait and some personal issues led Mary to go on a gamedev hiatus for an indefinite amount of time.

So yeah. After using RPG Maker for a long time it is time to take a break. I don't know when I'll return to making games, but rest assured: Project Parfait is not, I repeat, NOT canceled. It is still my dream to get it done someday, it just won't be anytime soon. For the time being I'll concentrate on some of my other hobbies, like video projects and art, things that I have painfully neglected to do in the last couple years. I probably won't be using this blog until I get back into RM, so feel free to remove dead weight from your bookmarks. For now Twitter is the best way to gauge what I'm currently doing, and one of my goals for 2018 is to be more active overall.

Tl;dr: no gamedev from me in the near future. 

Oh, and before I forget: 
Happy new year 2018 to everyone! I hope it'll be the greatest one yet!

Now that work on the contest project has wrapped I was finally able to work on Parfait juuust a little bit more. I haven't really talked about the game's story yet, so I'm gonna do that right now.

When you start up the game, you get to choose between three different prologues which you can play in any order. They all take place at the same time and eventually lead into the main story.

The Clerk is a highly indepted young man trying and failing to run a shop. He then learns that the hot new thing on the market are ultra-rare gemstones which can only be found by spelunking. So naturally he grabs his pickaxe and starts getting serious. This chapter is mainly about dungeon diving.

The Inventor's prologue is about a (real shocker incoming) wandering inventor who gets kicked out of the town she's currently staying in due to blowing up the major's house. This chapter is less about fighting and more about puzzle solving.

Finally, there's the Healer's chapter which is about a man having to escape his hometown due to reasons I won't reveal just yet. This chapter will be mostly about stealth.

There's more to it all, obviously, but that's all I'm gonna share for now. If I can keep up the current pace I might very well be able to release the demo, which contains all three prologues, before the end of the year... but we'll see about that. Been busy with the mapping for now. Have a sneak peek of an unfinished map!

Obviously needs more bells and whistles, but the ground work is there. And that's all I have to show today. Catch you all next time!

I guess you could say I'm kind of a ninja dev. It wasn't like this when I started this blog, but nowadays I just prefer to work on my projects in the shaaadows! But worry not, because I bear great news:

I MANAGED TO GET SOMETHING DONE!!!

My incredible partner Zeigfried_McBacon and I entered the IGMC 2017. And we actually completed a short game! It's called Lakeholt's Dragon and has gameplay similar to Legend of Zelda. It's about an hour in length and definitely on the goofy side of things. More details and a download will be provided as soon as the evaluation is complete.

Development on Project Parfait has been somewhat slow due to abovementioned contest, but will resume shortly. One of the problems I encountered was the font choice. I had found one I liked, mind you, but it was rather unpopular with players who (rightfully) identified it as too fancy to read all the time.

I looked literally all over the internet for a good replacement, but most of the pixel fonts I found ended up looking like poop above 18p or had weird spacing issues. After something like four months, I stumbled onto a new font by complete chance, and instantly fell in love with it. This is what it looks like now:

This gorgeous typeface is called Romulus and was created by the amazing Pix3M on deviantart. So yeah, that's one thing finally off the table. I'll post more details about Parfait in the coming days, so stay tuned!

Oookay, I won't beat around the bush here: I got lazy again. Or rather, after having worked on Project Parfait for a while I suddenly didn't like the build anymore!

Sooo everything has been redone from scratch. Again. So here I am, reassuring everybody that this time the project will be completed. And it's actually very likely this time around: development has been going smooth, 75% of the database stuff is finished and this time I have a plot that (hopefully) doesn't suck.

This particular incarnation of the project has been in development since November 2016 and I hope to have it completed by the end of the year. More will be revealed in the following days, so I'll just leave you with this:

Any and all feedback and improvement suggestions are welcome! If possible as a YouTube comment since this site suffers from a constant spam barrage. 

Happy new year peoples! Even if it's the 24th already. After all the festivities were over I did work on more stuff for the game. I actually finished two dungeons! Well, finished one and streamlined another to be precise, but who's gonna care?

First is Deuil Forest, a story dungeon where semi-important stuff happens. Maybe. Anybody who knows me also knows that I'm pretty bad when it comes to mapping, but I've been practicing a lot recently and I do think that my maps have improved compared to my past projects. This dungeon has a bit of elevation, something that was supposed to features in Disillusioned Strategies long ago.

Second is Deuil Mine, an optional dungeon where you can get your first monster party member. The place was originally much bigger and more open, but I decided to redo most of it to reduce the navigation tedium.

And yeah for now I'm trying to focus on one update per month. It's not optimal but still better than only updating once or twice a year.
​Well, later peeps!

It's even got particles. Particles! Also, now that the main cast's stats have been finished, I experimented a 'lil bit. The following is the result:

Reeecruuuitable mooonsters! I had the spritesheets finished, so might as well. Monsters will even have their own unique magic and limit skills! When and how to recruit these critters is classified for now! (Because I don't know yet.)

Daaayum I'm lovin' this new menu. *COUGH* Um anyways, yeah. Working on this game is still a lot of fun! I'm probably not quuuuite gonna make that 2015 release, but maybe we'll have something playable before the new year after all. Maybe. I mean, this blog has been going on for over five years and there has been pretty much nothing playable. Meep.