Elipsis

chatting about horror games earlier with a friend reminded me i want to make a horror-focused cave story mod again one day... 'they have been reset' (which was a collab with jpzarde) was a lot of fun to do but i think there's a lot more potential to make Scary Thing in the CS engine(s?) - there's an idea i've had for a long time but i will keep it secret for now in case i do eventually make it one day (smiles). my friend bonnie's 000000 was really good (fearlessly shilling) but it's one of the few non-joke horror mods i can think of - definitely an underutilised genre, which is unfortunate

i do have plans to make the final area for evergreen's true ending horror-adjacent, but we'll see how much i lean into that? i suspect it will likely draw more from stuff like psychonauts, undertale's true lab/photoshop flowey or omori's blackspace, that sort of (mostly) quietly bizarre/unsettling mismatched aesthetic rather than Ahh Rahhh Blood Guts Jumpscare!!! (i guess you could call it yume nikki-esque? something along those lines) - essentially a focus on unnerving the player rather than outright scaring them. ultimately though whatever it is will come down to what i can wrangle out of the freeware engine and my own art skills...

also speaking of i think i'm ready to release that playtester build for the first final boss but it seems i may have to wait a couple weeks since i need to focus on a project for school due next week and then like a day or two after THAT is deltajune... aghhhhhhhh toby fox you've done it again!!!

art test! i downloaded a new CSP brush earlier today and it actually looks pretty nice at low resolution so i'm thinking of utilising it for evergreen... most likely the credit artwork, as i like the current backgrounds.

if you're wondering what mod, it's evergreen 2 - currently the only version of CS i have downloaded that actually runs on my mac so i used it as a quick testing ground

Eli hello!! !!!

So, I heard about Evergreen's progress! As a resident bucket punner, this is great! More business for me!

Problem though. See, Evergreen is fire. Absolute gas. Peak even. However, it might be TOO fire, because it melted all my ice puns! I think we might have a problem.

Regardless, while I get this all cleaned up and have things chill for a bit, I just wanted to reach out and say "Congratulations on the progress!!!".

So uh yeah. Congratulations on the progress!!!

~sincerely, Bucketwon.

P.S.: If you ever get a higher budget for this production, I'd like to be upgraded to a Tubwon. Thank you!

evergreen's salad ending is now fully complete and functional in-game, including finalised assets. this is extremely stupid and i can't stop giggling to myself like an idiot every time i think about it, so it's a good thing i live alone

realistically speaking, i intend to at the very least get to the point where everything is done or at least presentable up to the first ending credits; a state which i am more or less at awaiting playtester feedback on the boss and finalisation of assets in the credits, but... it's not even june yet and i plan to release this demo for august's modgala, so i may be able to work on the secret boss and its associated joke ending...????? the pace at which i work is incredibly inconsistent and typically involves a mad scramble to get as much stuff done as possible before my brain loses interest and i don't know if my medication will help with that, so i don't want to promise anything (and on top of that i have schoolwork to prioritise) - i would rather focus on polishing existing content and ensuring its quality before i even think about touching anything new

i also have a bunch of other projects that i should work on getting off my backlog, mostly involving computer repair... i have a laptop i'm fixing up for my cousin's christmas present that i need to order parts for and then test to see if it can pass the necessary qualifications of 'can it run minecraft', another laptop for myself that i also need to order parts for, an old PC i need to get a HDD and discs to make a Legitimate WinXP Installation (Real) for... actually those all stalled because i need to buy most of the required parts online and i baulked at the shipping costs so maybe i need to get 10 billion dollars first and/or just promote my art commissions a bunch. hey if someone wants to buy me two DATO M.2 2230 PCIe SSD 512GB, PCIe Gen 3x4 NVMe 1.3 Internal Solid State Drives Gen3, M Key, Single Sided, up to 2500/1700 MB/s - DP330 Series i can draw a funny image in return

semi-related to modding i now know why my dad (who has been wfh for a couple years now) complains so much about cold weather, this shit hits different when you're sitting at a desk for an extended period of time. does not help that my apartment gets zero natural light and if it's already this cold and we're only in may... i need a big fluffy dog to lie on my feet or something...

ahhh i really wish i was in the position to get a dog but my apartment is strictly no pets (and is way too small anyway). i also do not think your average dog could make it safely up or down the extremely dubious stairs to my bedroom (where my desk is) and i don't particularly know how to warn a dog (dawg?) about stairs, bro

evergreen update... i think the first ending's final boss is, more or less, functionally complete both graphically and mechanically - i need to finish a transition cutscene between the first and second phase, as well as set up skipflags yadda yadda... there's some minor things i can do for the second phase in particular (and a bug i still need to get help with squashing in the first phase, but it's not game-breaking), but at this point i think i will switch my priority to the cutscenes and skipflags as well as tidying up the script and map, at least as the priority for today

later in the week, i plan to release a private demo in my personal discord server to get playtester feedback on this boss, which i hope will allow me to polish it even further - i also still need to finish the credits, they're essentially done but barebones/still have placeholder assets art-wise and there's no music yet... i still plan to wait until august/modgala for the public release, so they don't have to be a priority at this point since they give the necessary, well, credits

anyway, once this boss is polished to a satisfactory level... i guess i'll go about implementing the second joke ending, and depending on how much time/motivation i have after that, i'll start working on the secret boss (and third joke ending), since regardless of its completion level, i can very easily lock access if i feel it is not ready in time, so it's low priority...

good lord it's weird to think that i'm going to actually finish this mod

the greens are evering away! i spent today working on a background graphic (see spoiler tag below) as well as making and implementing a teleport animation for the boss, which was easier said than done :']
regarding the boss, i have one attack phase to finish spriting, and then i need to give all the phases a final go-over and visual polish... after that comes the tricky task of making the HP bar work and then ensuring the transition into the second phase is still functional... and then expanding on and polishing it as well...

once i get the boss into a playable state start to finish, i will probably seek playtester feedback as the next priority i learned my lesson from festive quest LOL and then after that i have some stuff to fix up in the credits - i'm hoping for a public release of the next demo in august for modgala! it's a ways away, but knowing my tendency to procrastinate, i'm hoping it will give me plenty of time to ensure everything is good and ready to go :]

adhd meds are wild you're telling me it's possible to just sit still? and focus on something for extended periods of time without getting distracted or antsy?? what is this feeling

it's (one of) evergreen's birthdays today... 4 years ago i first uploaded the 'remake'/continuation of the original modfest demo

i wish i could say i had progress to show off, or like, any kind of thing to celebrate it, but i haven't even touched the game since last year - to be clear, it is not cancelled, and i haven't given up on it, i just haven't been able to wrangle my brain into modding :']

...i'll try and draw something today at least

i need to work on and play/review more mods oops

my excuse is that my mac's wine installation is still broken but really it's been busted for ages and i do have a perfectly functional windows laptop these days... ahh i just really dislike navigating windows though...!!!

update: i have overcome my skill issue. credits.tsc and i are best friends now.

rage against the credits.tsc
i forgot how annoying it was to test... did festive quest teach me nothing...

new evergreen demo will be streamed for modgala :]

...still working on evergreen! i'm close to finishing the first 'real' ending (not counting a joke one), i just need to script some cutscenes and tweak the final boss, as well as draw the credits art!

i've just moved out of home, so i've been preoccupied with that, but once i'm settled i'll have some time between jobs... hoping to wrangle up a private demo sooner rather than later...

today is, technically, evergreen's 3rd anniversary! wack!

i wish i could say i had a new demo or even the full game ready, but sadly i do not. have this cool drawing instead

i continue to not be dead! life has uh, been hectic as of late - i had a major surgery last week and i'm off work for 6 weeks to recover, so i'm hoping i can get some serious progress done on evergreen...

speaking of, i went over frigid cavern's tileset, and redrew (pretty much all of) the tiles to be unique instead of vanilla recolours - very happy with the result! i need to make tilesets more, they're a lot of fun :]

I AIN'T DEAD

in the final stages of pre-release polish, though progress is slow... seems my adhd hell brain is focused back on modding at the moment though, so i'm hoping it'll hold on till i can get this update out lol

in other news, i've been trying to work through my game backlog, and managed to finish nier automata and silent hill 2, both of which i greatly enjoyed, and i've just begun rainworld after being various levels of harassed to do so by several friends

oops i'm here to announce another delay in the evergreen update, but for good reasons for once: freeware now supports multiple tile layers (thanks to periwinkle!) and i am going absolutely nuts with the decoration