August Progress Report

Hi everyone,

I wanted to give a progress report so there's no radio silence in case I can't finish the "Respite" update this month, although I am still trying to do so. That said I won't provide any dates I'm not fully confident about.

7F "Respite" - Almost finished, hoping to send to testers within the next day or two. Respite contains many new scenes with Kaori (some with new CG, others with re-contextualized Trial or Combat CG), the Kitchen storyline in her Trial, her remaining battle moves, and the floor's Crafting system.

The Crafting is especially important as the floor's "challenge" content, which many of you have already encountered, was balanced assuming you had access to it. I'm very sorry it's been so long as I feel the floor's difficulty curve is off balance without crafting -- I didn't expect "Respite" to take so long to implement and should have added a temporary/alternate method in the interim.

Respite is not mechanically complex so the testing should be swift.

8F Integration - Part of my split focus from Respite was a lot of work on this and have a mostly playable personal build and want to commit to a Mid September release. I wish to make further adjustments so that 8F feels truly integrated and not simply the standalone stapled on top of 7F, but I will commit to mid-Sept regardless and push the adjustments to the next release if necessary as I know some very patient players have been waiting a long time to meet Iris.

Swan and Crow Part III - Scheduled for release after 8F integration.

9F - I realize people are traumatized by 7F and so assume 9F must be far in the distance. This is not the case. It is largely finished, buggy but playable, and being tested by Bowei. Most of my 80k+ word screenplay is already implemented, thus escaping the dreaded "scene implementation" black hole that plagued 7F. It does still need touch ups and is very big, I'm confident in a Fall release.

10F - I have been working on the screenplay for this as our workflow is much better if I can keep "ahead" of him in screenplay. Bowei's concept for this floor is very ambitious and extremely difficult to write/execute well. I'm not sure about Bo's CG or mechanical progress and the screenplay still has much to be done, though, so no ETA. 

For our non-ToT projects (Level 0, HuH, WG, etc.), I am hoping to fit some of these in after Swan+Crow Part III, as that's when I'll feel "caught up" to an extent.

Thanks as always for your support.