Okay, I went through the bug list Amerk sent me on his second play through (thank u a million x over), and everything seems to be in working order.

I'll be uploading the new version in a few mins.

Sorry all, and thx again to Dennis for the bug reports that he's been sending me via email.

Yep, there was a major bug in Venaizen, and unless you're playing the game through the rm2k engine you're basically not gonna be able to progress.

I apologize for this, and I have just uploaded a new version now.

WOO! I've stayed off the RMN forums for 5 days!

Okay, Amerk finished his play through. While there were many bugs ( as I knew there would be), the main problem he had was the story. I have only loosely tied these games together, and as a longtime player, he felt cheated of a cohesive ending to the trilogy. I made it too self contained. I can definitely see his point, and though it may steer some people away, I'm adding in new story elements now that will properly tie them together and changing the ending a bit to fit with it.

What is going to happen now is that we will finally find out all of the secrets of Eden, the knights, the dark army, and all of the others things I never really fully explained before. I sent him a draft of the new story (which takes many story suggestions of his own) and I have a pretty decent way of implementing it. It should take too long either (the bugs will), aside from the additional boss fights at the end. I spent a long time thinking about it, and he's right that it needs cohesion, rather than the normal ambiguity I've been resorting to for so long. It is the end of an era, right?

Anyways, I still have a bunch of stuff that I've been adding while he did his play through, so this is going to take me pretty much the rest of this month to complete. I'm aiming for a December 30th release date now. I really need the time to iron out these problems and implement the new ideas.

Due to his great notes, I also have a bunch of stuff I can do better for the trilogy edition, which I'll be getting to soon.

I got pretty much all the tedious stuff out of the way today. My estimation is that I only have about 1 day of work left on this game before I can send it on over to Amerk for beta testing. As mentioned previously, he's very quick, so I have no doubts about releasing it on time.

I'll be pasting in the rest of the level events, adding some NPCs to the last town, and finishing up the ending scenes, and then it's done! At least, til I get the bug reports from Amerk.

I look forward to getting his feedback on it, and hopefully fixing a few things along the way. Other than that, however, it's a done deal. At least, of course, until I upgrade the trilogy to versions 1.3, which I'll get started on pretty much right away.

Woops. I totally took off way more time from this than I should have, especially with it being so close to being finished. I have no real excuses either, except that alcohol is a very tasty treat and makes for some really fun nights out.

Anyways, not much to report here. All I've managed to do is the first grandscale battle. I still maintain that it'll be released before 2011, but not as early in the month as I'd hoped. I can't give it to Amerk for testing in its current form, and I'll be adding a few extras along the way as he tests it. In truth, what you'll be getting before new years will be more like a version 0.99 instead of 1.0 :S

Since I'm going back and giving all 3 games a facelift anyway, I don't feel as bad about leaving some of the planned extras out of the first release. I just really hope I get some feedback for this game, as it needs it a lot more than the first two games did (they're really more minimalist overall, while I'll be a bit more open to criticism on this particular entry). Things that I'll want to know when I get this first version online are about:
-length
-dungeon design
-extra content
-balancing (I don't want this game to be "too" easy compared to the other two, I want it at least the same).

I suppose I've been spending too much time fiddling around with map design for Fragile Hearts recently, and not enough time on this final stretch of EL3. It's just fun to be able to actually spend time on making things pretty for a change, when these 8bit eden legacies constantly have me thinking "is this too much? Yes, probably".

As for other EL news, Amerk's still busily working away at the novellas as we speak. They're pretty awesome so far. I'll chip away at the database for EL4 over the next few months, but as of the end of EL3 production I'm officially on break from doing any REAL work on it. How long will that last? I'm not sure. Releasing 3 full games in a series in under a year is pretty good for me, so I'm not ashamed to take some time off to work on new projects. (Fragile Hearts, for instance). I'll probably make it halfway through that game and then decide I want to start up EL4 officially. It's just how I am (and I want to build this series up a bit).

Wow, for not having much to report, this blog post is kinda long. Here's hoping I actually finish this game in the next week and a half!