hello~ it's been a while. i'm not dead, just very busy.

- where have you been?
teaching! i've been working various different positions at a university for the past two years, teaching game design! it's great work but it's exhausting, and takes up most of my time and energy.

- what state is the game in?
well i've done a lot of work these last couple years, rewriting heaps of old code (i built a new character controller from scratch!), making new shaders, new levels, getting saving and loading to work, and trying to make sure that everything runs smoothly. so at this stage the core of the game is pretty solid, and i'm mostly focusing on level design. i've also been thinking real hard about how the game should sound, what kind of music it should have and when it would be appropriate to have it. so yeah, at this point it's mostly just making levels and making assets for those levels, not much in the way of changes to the underlying structure anymore. it's nice. i get to just make stuff with the tools i've built instead of building new tools.

- how much longer is it going to take?
i'm not really sure. i haven't been able to work on the game at all this year because of teaching, so my current plan is to not teach next semester and instead apply for a grant to work on the game for 12 months. i think that should be long enough to get a 1.0 version shipped. after that i want  to keep adding new features and levels for a bit (i've also been thinking that a console release might be cool, if i can arrange it) and then probably move on to whatever the next thing is. i also want to do a few devlogs after release to talk about how i made some of the stuff in the game, like the character controller and water shader.
so what does that all mean in terms of projected release date? idk, maybe 2024? i think it's unlikely to be finished next year, but who knows. in the meantime i've been thinking that it might be worthwhile to start a patreon or comradery (i think i'd prefer the latter) or something, for anyone who wants to access early access builds and music prototypes or whatever. but i don't really know if enough people would be interested, or how much it would be appropriate to ask for.

- can we see what the game looks like so far?
yes! i've just uploaded a new demo version alongside this devlog which has two new prototype levels in it. these are accessible via two of the bus stops in the opening level. this demo version will also include the new character controller, save system, and renderer, but it'll also be kinda broken and buggy in places i'm sure, so if you do decide to play it remember that it's all very much in the middle of production, so please be kind to me (but also tell me if stuff is broken so i can try to fix it).

anyway i think that's about all i have to say.  see y'all in another two years lol.

bye.